michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[music]

Today: The trial was poised to be the most closely-watched in Japanese history — a case involving claims of corporate greed, wounded national pride, and a rigged legal system, until the defendant pulled off an unimaginable escape. Ben Dooley with the latest in the saga of Carlos Ghosn. It’s Tuesday, January 14. Ben, set the scene for us. It’s just before New Year’s in Tokyo. What are you doing?

ben dooley

So I’m fast asleep. It’s about 7:30 in the morning. I’m expecting to have a very easy holiday. The government offices are all closed for a week. Nothing’s happening in Japan. And all of a sudden my phone starts ringing. And it rings and rings and rings, and finally I decide I better answer it. When I pick it up, it’s New York.

michael barbaro

And then when you say New York, you mean the feared editors of The New York Times.

ben dooley

Yes, the feared editors. You never want to get an early morning phone call from New York. It’s never good news. It means either something bad has happened because someone else did something that you need to be worried about, or you’ve made some terrible mistake. And what they tell me is that Carlos Ghosn, the most famous criminal defendant in Japan, has just mysteriously disappeared and reappeared in Lebanon.

archived recording 1 Well, it’s a story we’re all talking about, the escape straight out of the movies. archived recording 2 Juiciest story of the new year, at least so far. archived recording 3 An international cloak and dagger escape. archived recording 4 Dramatic and mysterious escape of Carlos Ghosn. archived recording 5 Former Nissan C.E.O. and chairman, Carlos Ghosn has left Japan. archived recording 6 He’s now in Lebanon. archived recording 7 Yes. archived recording 8 Just by magic? archived recording 9 Extraordinary. archived recording 10 Once a C.E.O., now an international fugitive.

ben dooley

And you know, my first reaction is, how could he possibly have done this? You know, it seems like something out of a movie — impossible.

michael barbaro

And then remind us who Carlos Ghosn is.

ben dooley

So Carlos Ghosn is this legendary C.E.O. who made his name by reviving Nissan, this Japanese company, one of the country’s largest automakers. He took the company from essentially what he has recently called it — a dead company — and brought it back to life. And it was this miracle of turnaround that made him famous in Japan and throughout the world.

archived recording 1 Carlos Ghosn is regarded as one of the most dazzling managers in the automotive business. archived recording 2 He’s a huge figure, not just in Japan, not just for Nissan, but in the car industry.

ben dooley

And he went on to become the C.E.O. of Nissan, and also the French automaker Renault.

archived recording He turned things around at Renault, and then Nissan where, in 2005, Carlos Ghosn became the first person to run two Fortune 500 global companies at the same time.

ben dooley

And those two companies formed an alliance and became one of the world’s largest automakers.

archived recording It’s sort of hard to overstate the significance of going to Nissan and to Renault in this alliance.

ben dooley

He’s just living high — this incredible celebrity in the business world. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, November 2018, he lands at an airport in Tokyo and is arrested.

archived recording Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has been arrested for allegedly under-reporting his income.

ben dooley

And over the following several months, he is charged with four counts of financial wrongdoing.

archived recording The internal probe by the Japanese automaker found multiple violations, including salary fraud and personal use of company assets.

ben dooley

Essentially, prosecutors say that he was trying to enrich himself to the company. So that’s the situation he finds himself in. He is facing trial on these four charges when he flees from Japan to Lebanon.

michael barbaro

And what’s the answer to that question you have of how this happened? What’s the story?

ben dooley

Well, first, it’s important to understand that he’s under house arrest, but it’s not super strict. I mean, he goes out to dinners, he travels to Kyoto. So he’s been able to move around fairly easily. But as best as we can tell from our reporting and from local media and government statements is basically this. On December 29, he walks out of his home in Tokyo. This is a two-story, fairly large home in central Tokyo in a swanky neighborhood. And there are three cameras above the door that were installed by the prosecutors to keep a watch on him. And he just strolls out. He’s got a face mask on, like a surgical mask, the kind of thing that people typically wear here to stop themselves from getting sick, or stop other people from getting sick. He’s got on a hat, black clothes, and he walks out to a nearby hotel. He meets two men there, and they get on a bullet train to Osaka, which is a city to the southwest of Tokyo. They’re on the train for about two hours. They get off the train. They walk into a hotel. And then the two men walk out without Carlos Ghosn, but what they have is these two boxes, two large boxes. And the boxes have been described as sort of boxes for holding audio equipment, maybe like speakers or kinds of things you might see roadies carrying at a concert. And these two men take these boxes to the Kansai International Airport to the private jet terminal. And the boxes are too big to go through the luggage screening. So they’re not screened. Keep in mind, it’s almost New Year’s. People are off their guard. They’re not really that interested in checking to see what’s in these boxes. They’re just kind of relaxing, looking forward to their holiday. And these man just wheel these boxes right onto the plane, a private jet that’s waiting there. And the plane takes off, and in one of those boxes we believe is Carlos Ghosn.

michael barbaro

Wow. So Japan’s most famous criminal defendant flees the country in an audio box.

ben dooley

That’s what we think happened.

michael barbaro

I mean, what you’re describing feels both very simple and extremely elaborate.

ben dooley

Yeah. Well, this was not something that he did by himself with two friends. This is something that took a lot of resources, a lot of planning, and it’s something that he’s famous for — being this detail-oriented planner and someone who likes to manage lots of people, like big teams of people. So you can imagine this was a pretty complex operation even if the execution was simple.

michael barbaro

Ben, after all of that detailed planning and this escape, why is he going to Lebanon of all places?

ben dooley

Well, he had three passports. He is a citizen of Brazil, France and Lebanon. And Lebanon was the closest. It doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan, which means that the Lebanese government will never send him back to Japan to face a trial. And he’s something of a national hero in Lebanon. So he could expect a hero’s welcome.

michael barbaro

So what’s the reaction back in Tokyo once word trickles back that he has pulled this off?

ben dooley

Silence. Absolute silence. They’re caught completely off-guard. But behind that silence, there’s sort of an embarrassment that the prosecutors have allowed the country’s most famous criminal defendant to slip through their fingers, and some outrage. Even among people who supported him, there was a sense that he’d gone too far, and that he should have stayed in Japan to defend himself. That would have been the most appropriate thing for him to do.

michael barbaro

And then what are you doing at this point? Because a story that I assume you are very much responsible for has literally just up and left the country that you cover.

ben dooley

Yeah. Well, suddenly this story that I was hugely responsible for, when I was supposed to be taking a vacation, just appears in my lap. And I’m just frantically calling as many people as I can, getting in touch with his PR team, his lawyers, various people that I’ve spoken to over the previous year about his case, pretty much anyone I can think of. And the big question I have is, now that he’s free, is he going to talk? And if so, will he talk to us? And then I get a phone call. And someone asks me, if Carlos Ghosn is willing to talk to you, would you be able to get on a plane to Lebanon?

michael barbaro

Wow.

ben dooley

And I said, of course.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. O.K. So Ben, Carlos Ghosn is willing to talk to you. What happens next?

ben dooley

So I go online and I buy a last-minute ticket to Beirut. And I’m frantically packing, get all my stuff in order, run to Haneda Airport, jump on the plane. And 23 hours later, I touch down in Lebanon.

michael barbaro

Wow. That’s a long flight.

ben dooley

Yeah. There was a layover in Paris. So that wasn’t so bad. I had a croissant and some coffee. So I’m in Lebanon and I’m preparing to talk to Carlos Ghosn. But before I get to sit down with him, first there’s this news conference that he’s scheduled.

ben dooley So we’re in an Uber heading towards Press Club where we’re going to see Carlos Ghosn give his first press conference since he was arrested in November of 2018. It’s a rainy day today. Traffic is pretty intense.

ben dooley

So I and one of my colleagues from the Beirut bureau go to a Press Club, where the conference is going to be held.

ben dooley All right. We’ve just arrived at the venue.

ben dooley

And we get there, and it’s just chaos.

archived recording [CHATTER]

ben dooley

I mean, there are hundreds of reporters. They’re all clamoring to get in. People are screaming, shouting, pushing.

ben dooley Great. We’re heading through security to the venue. We’ve got some guy with a guard dog here. Tension’s running a little bit high here.

ben dooley

There are armed guards with dogs and TV trucks everywhere.

ben dooley Sorry. We’re on the list. New York Times.

ben dooley

And we get inside. And we go upstairs and we walk into this big, empty white room with chairs lined up. There are about 100 reporters there from all over the world.

ben dooley This is what’s usually referred to as a media circus. archived recording 1 Please be seated. Please be seated. archived recording 2 Sit down! Sit down!

ben dooley

And they’re all waiting to hear what Carlos Ghosn has to say.

ben dooley So he’s about to walk in. We’ve just heard — Yeah, he’s walking in. He’s with his wife Carol.

ben dooley

And when he comes in, people just swarm him. It’s a crush of reporters.

ben dooley All of the cameramen and photographers are pushing up trying to get a good shot of him as he walks into the room.

ben dooley

Flashbulbs are going off and everyone’s just crowded around him.

ben dooley This is pretty exciting. I’ve been writing about this guy for almost a year now. It’s the first time I’ve actually seen him in the flesh.

ben dooley

He looks healthy. He’s got a nice black suit on, red tie. I mean, he’s the picture of a C.E.O.

michael barbaro

So no worse for the wear?

ben dooley

You wouldn’t know it. And he walks up to the lectern, and the show starts.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for taking the time to be here.

ben dooley

It’s everything that he’s been saving up for the last year.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) As you can imagine, today is a very important day for me. One, that I have looked forward to every single day for more than 400 days.

ben dooley

He just is taking the opportunity to explain himself, what happened to him, his whole story.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Since I was brutally taken from my world as I knew it, ripped from my family, my friends, my communities, from Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, and the 450,000 women and men who comprise those companies.

ben dooley

And he starts walking us through his history with Nissan.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And Renault, which was nowhere in 1999, which became one of the top 60 brands in the world —

ben dooley

— and how he turned it around, and the amazing success that the company had while he was C.E.O.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) You know, a C.E.O. is here as long as he performs. I didn’t stay 17 years head of Nissan because I was Carlos Ghosn. I was there only because I was performing. I was delivering growth. I was delivering profit. I was delivering cash flow. I was delivering business.

ben dooley

And then he starts to talk about the arrest.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I was arrested on November 19, 2018.

ben dooley

And how it happened.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I didn’t suspect anything.

ben dooley

And how he was completely caught off guard.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Some people asked me, oh my god, you didn’t look at this? You didn’t mention this? You didn’t suspect this? And I say, you know what happened in Pearl Harbor? Did you see Pearl Harbor happen?

ben dooley

He says it was like Pearl Harbor.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Did you see Pearl Harbor happen? Did you notice what happened in Pearl Harbor?

michael barbaro

Huh. He says his arrest was like the sneak attack from Japan that led the United States into World War II?

ben dooley

Yeah, exactly. He said he had no idea it was coming.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And I didn’t notice it, because it’s true that when it’s planned and it’s confidential and it’s secret, well, it happens. And you’d be surprised, and I was surprised.

ben dooley

And then he starts to go through all of the charges against him.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) The first accusation is the under-reporting. This is the main accusation for which I was arrested.

ben dooley

And he’s got slides. He’s projecting documents on the wall.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I think we have the list. Yeah, we have here the list.

ben dooley

You know, getting way into the weeds of these issues, frankly trying to litigate them in front of this audience.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) We continue. This is another one.

ben dooley

And people, at this point, are starting to get a little antsy. They’re starting to have conversations behind me, because you can’t read the documents. And even if you could, there’s no way that we were in a position to judge what they actually said about the charges against him. But the larger point he’s trying to make is that this is a stitch up.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) But obviously, I didn’t know that Nissan was behind it. And it was all staged way before between the prosecutor and the public.

ben dooley

That all the charges against him are completely political. They’re made up. And he’s saying that the reason why the Japanese government brought these charges against them is basically because he wounded their national pride.

michael barbaro

And what’s his argument for how he did that?

ben dooley

So basically, it comes down to the idea that, as the head of Renault, he had been tasked by the French government to make the alliance between Renault and Nissan stronger, to make the alliance so strong that the two companies would never be able to be separated. And this was seen in Japan, he argues, as essentially an attempt to take one of the crown jewels of Japan’s auto industry and turn it into a French company. And if this were to have gone through, the argument was then France would be in control of one of Japan’s biggest and most important companies.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Unfortunately, there was no trust.

ben dooley

And that was something that the Japanese government and certain people at Nissan were just unwilling to allow to happen.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And some of our Japanese friends thought the only way to get rid of the influence of Renault on Nissan is to get rid of him.

michael barbaro

So he says that the crime he committed — which it sounds like he doesn’t think is a crime at all — is taking a Japanese brand and making it less Japanese, and offending the people and the government of Japan in the process.

ben dooley

Right. And he says that was not at all his plan, but that was the fear, and that’s what led to his downfall.

michael barbaro

According to Carlos Ghosn?

ben dooley

Yes.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Let me continue. 130 days in prison, solitary confinement, tiny cell without windows.

ben dooley

And he also went into detail about his experience in the Japanese justice system.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Showered twice a week. Tried to ask to have more. They said no. Prescribed medication is forbidden. You can get only the medicine from the prison.

ben dooley

How he had spent more than 130 days in a Japanese jail waiting to get on bail. During that time, he had been interrogated by prosecutors without his lawyer from 7 to 11 hours a day. And even once he got out of jail, there were these restrictions put on his daily life. And the most egregious one for him, he said, was that he wasn’t allowed to meet his wife.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) And the question was very interesting. He was saying, why do they want to meet? I’d say, O.K., how about a Zoom, a conference. He said, what do they want to talk about?

ben dooley

And Japanese prosecutors had essentially said that they believed that if he were allowed to speak to her, might tamper with evidence, might try to get to witnesses in the case. And his argument is, well, that’s ridiculous, because if I wanted to do that, I could have done that through anyone. I didn’t have to use my wife. So the only reason why they were forbidding me from seeing her was because they were punishing me.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Because they knew that by not allowing me to have a normal life, they were breaking me.

ben dooley

They’re trying to squeeze a confession out of him. And when he refused to confess to the crimes they had charged him with, they threatened to make his life a living hell.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I felt like I was not a human anymore.

ben dooley

So he said that all these elements add up to create a system of justice that was rigged against him, and that he had no chance of ever getting a fair trial in Japan, and that’s why he felt he had to escape.

michael barbaro

And Ben, as you’re sitting there hearing Carlos Ghosn make these arguments, what are you thinking? And do they sound accurate and truthful, or do they sound highly disputable?

ben dooley

It’s impossible to say at this point. We haven’t seen any of the evidence. And I think if you were to ask the prosecutors, they would say, this is a man who lied to Nissan’s shareholders. This is a man who enriched himself at the company’s expense. And it’s just impossible to know what the truth is at this point.

michael barbaro

Right, because he fled the country before the trial.

ben dooley

Right, exactly.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) I left Japan because I wanted justice. That’s why I left Japan. I didn’t run from justice. I want justice, because justice is the only way I’ll re-establish my reputation, and the only way what I’ve done during my life is going to be recognized to its value. And if I don’t get it in Japan, I’m going to get it somewhere else. Thank you for your attention.

ben dooley

And so Carlos Ghosn finishes up his presentation, and he moves into the question and answer section.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) O.K., what we’re going to try to do is go by region.

ben dooley

And he starts answering questions in four different languages.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) [SPEAKING ARABIC]

ben dooley

He’s speaking Arabic, which is the language he spoke at home with his parents.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) [SPEAKING PORTUGUESE]

ben dooley

He’s speaking Portuguese, which is the language of the country he was born — Brazil.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) [SPEAKING FRENCH]

ben dooley

He’s speaking in French, the language of the country he was educated. And, of course, in English.

archived recording (carlos ghosn) Well, as you know —

ben dooley

I’m just watching him flawlessly move from language to language answering these questions for reporters around the world. And it occurs to me as I’m watching, it’s an incredible performance, and it says a lot about this guy’s identity. He’s this transnational business person who essentially doesn’t belong to any one nation. He lives in this almost kind of like gray area between nation states. And there’s something about it that it seems is really essential to the case against him and how he’s responded to it.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

ben dooley

Well, he believes that the charges against him were brought by the Japanese because he is not Japanese. So there’s that on one hand. But on the other hand, also, he feels like he’s not beholden to Japanese justice. As this person with passports from Brazil and France and Lebanon, and houses around the world, and connections, and networks that span the globe, he doesn’t feel like he has to subject himself to Japanese justice. He believes that he can make the choice to just get up and leave, to disappear.

michael barbaro

Right. So whether or not this tactic can ever seem justified or not justified, the message that Carlos Ghosn is sending by fleeing his trial in Japan is that if you’re a global C.E.O. and you are well-connected and you have resources, you get to choose which country’s legal system you can abide by, which ones you’re willing to participate in, and which ones you plan an elaborate escape from, which basically boils down to not really feeling accountable to any one country.

ben dooley

Right. And it was a question that was bothering me, and I really wanted to ask him about it. And I finally got the chance after the press conference ended and I got to sit down with him one-on-one. We went upstairs, and I tried to set up the fancy recorder you guys made me buy, and I messed it up. So we didn’t get the whole interview, unfortunately. [LAUGHTER]

michael barbaro

We forgive you. It had been a long week.

ben dooley

It had been a long week. And I sat down with him and I asked him that question.

ben dooley We probably will have people listening or reading who are thinking to themselves, O.K., maybe the Japanese justice system is rigged, but the only reason why you could do this is because you’re a person of wealth. You have power connections, and that’s what allowed you to escape Japan. I mean, is that fair? carlos ghosn That you put the other way. That you put the other way.

ben dooley

And he kind of danced around the question, but he came down basically on the idea that the Japanese system is rigged.

carlos ghosn So back to your question, yes. At the end of the day, I fell in a trap, found the way out, which requires resources and contacts, no doubt about it. But the protection is not to have money. The protection is avoid going in places, or you can fall into a trap like this. And I think it’s my responsibility today that all the foreigners who are in Japan be careful.

ben dooley

That was the message that he wanted to convey to the world.

[music]

ben dooley

And the great irony here is that he says he’s searching for justice, but because of a decision that he made he may never find it, because there’s always going to be an asterisk next to this case. He’s not going to be able to make his case fully, and the Japanese prosecutors are never going to be able to make it either. So there’s not going to be a real test of his innocence. But what he has done is, he has let C.E.O.s around the world know that this is an option, that if they don’t like the justice in the country where they are, they can just get up and leave.

michael barbaro

Thank you, Ben.

ben dooley

Thank you, Michael.

michael barbaro