Last month, Greg Kelly, a Nissan board member and aide-de-camp to the company’s embattled chairman, Carlos Ghosn, planned to join the company’s meeting as he usually did, via video conference from his home in a leafy Nashville suburb. Then he got a call from Japan.

Hari Nada, a close friend and a senior vice president at Nissan, invited Mr. Kelly to come to the automaker’s headquarters outside Tokyo. Mr. Kelly told Mr. Nada he could not travel because he was getting ready to undergo surgery to treat a spinal condition, according to an account of the events provided by Mr. Kelly’s family and lawyer. Mr. Nada assured Mr. Kelly that he would be back home by Thanksgiving well ahead of his scheduled operation. Nissan would even send a corporate jet to pick him up — a luxury Mr. Kelly had rarely received.

Not long after the jet touched down in Tokyo, Mr. Kelly was arrested, part of a meticulously planned operation to bring him and Mr. Ghosn into custody on charges that they violated financial reporting laws by understating Mr. Ghosn’s compensation.

Japanese prosecutors say Mr. Kelly, who was in charge of human resources at the company before becoming a board member, was the mastermind behind a scheme that allowed Mr. Ghosn to illegally omit $44 million in compensation, about half of his total pay, over five years from securities filings. Lawyers in Japan for both men have denied the charges.