Nissan said it was cooperating with Japanese prosecutors and that its investigation into Mr. Ghosn began after a whistle-blower said he had been misrepresenting his salary and using company assets for personal purposes.

Born in Brazil to Lebanese parents and educated at elite universities in France, Mr. Ghosn made his reputation after joining Nissan in 1999. Renault, where Mr. Ghosn was an executive vice president, had bought a large stake in the Japanese company, which was on the verge of collapse at the time.

Mr. Ghosn made sweeping changes at Nissan, closing five domestic factories and cutting 21,000 jobs. Later, he engineered an arrangement between Renault and Nissan that allowed them to operate like a single carmaker. Short of a full merger, the alliance enabled them to share the cost of developing new models and to negotiate better deals with suppliers by buying components together.

As chairman and chief executive of the partnership, Mr. Ghosn was celebrated in Japan: His life story was made into a manga comic, although critics on the left noted he had earned his French nickname, “Le cost killer.” Still, he had enough political savvy to retain the support of the French government, which owns 15 percent of Renault, despite some bitter pay disputes.

In 2016 and 2017, Mr. Ghosn’s salary at Renault was questioned publicly, by French government officials and a shareholder group; this year he agreed to a 30 percent pay cut in return for another four-year term as chief executive.

Under Mr. Ghosn, the alliance overcame the kinds of differences in corporate and national cultures that have often doomed megamergers like the ill-fated marriage between Daimler and Chrysler, which was dissolved in 2007.

Mr. Ghosn, the epitome of the globe-trotting, multitasking manager, was chief executive of both Nissan and Renault from 2005 to 2017, flying between Paris and Tokyo every few weeks. He was also something of a media star, holding forth on panels at the World Economic Forum in Davos and celebrating his 2016 marriage at Versailles with actors dressed in 18th-century costume.