Authorities showed up at Ghosn’s Tokyo apartment shortly before 6 a.m. Thursday to detain him, cutting short the freedom he enjoyed since his March 6 release on bail. Prosecutors said he used company money funneled through an intermediary for personal purposes, the most serious charges yet against the global auto titan, who once led Nissan, Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. at the same time.
“The chance for Ghosn to come out clean is getting slimmer and slimmer,” said Tatsuo Yoshida, an analyst at Sawakami Asset Management Inc. “It looks like Renault is now on the same page with Nissan. They want to make sure management and governance restructuring won’t be delayed by any unexpected development.”Ghosn was arrested again because he’s a flight risk and could destroy evidence, Shin Kukimoto, deputy chief prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, said at a briefing.
The payments in Oman were to Suhail Bahwan Automobiles LLC, which is Nissan’s exclusive distributor in the sultanate, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The automaker first flagged the payments to Renault along with discounts on vehicles to Oman dealerships that the Japanese company suspected as being inflated, according to one of the people.
A Paris-based spokeswoman for the Ghosn family denied any wrongdoing by Ghosn and said reports of Oman payments, use of the airplanes and the startup are part of a smear campaign to make the former executive look greedy. “Nissan’s internal investigation has uncovered substantial evidence of blatantly unethical conduct,” Nicholas Maxfield, a spokesman for the Yokohama-based automaker, said in an email. “Further discoveries related to Ghosn’s misconduct continue to emerge.”Under the Japanese legal process, prosecutors have 48 hours to detain suspects, after which they can make a 10-day detention request. That can be extended another 10 days by filing a second request to the court.