A Cherry Carlos, A Red Faced Japan

With no inkling whatsoever, in a carefully planned move, like a Hollywood cinema thriller, he flew out of Japan on the new year eve

Mumbai: The new year holidays are the most important ones for Japan when all government agencies and most businesses are closed for a week. The new year began for Japan, with the sensational escape of Carlos Ghosn, the celebrated deposed former CEO of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, from his Tokyo house prison, which left the nation redfaced and speechless. It is alleged that he did not disclose the USD 80 mn remuneration that he illegally took from Nissan and that the company also gave large advances to his associates in Saudi Arabia and Oman, which benefitted him and were again not disclosed. He was arrested in November 2018, when he landed in Tokyo in what was meant to be a routine business visit. He denies any wrongdoing and says that he is innocent and his camp says that he has been a victim of a corporate board room struggle at Nissan and that a board issue has been wrongly converted into a criminal offense. Upon his arrest, he was put in a tiny jail cell in a Tokyo prison. He got bail in April 2019, only to be rearrested and put in a house prison in an elegant Tokyo neighborhood, with round the clock manned and camera surveillance and no access to the telephone, the internet, and his wife, since it was feared that they will tamper evidence and witnesses and that he was a high flight risk. His three passports viz. French, Brazilian and Lebanese were deposited with his lawyer under court instructions and he was preparing for his trial, which was expected to begin in mid-2020 or even later, till when he would be under arrest. He last met his lawyer and legal team on Christmas and his daughter, Maya, a week ago and was preparing to defend himself in the huge criminal charges brought against him.

With no inkling whatsoever, in a carefully planned move, like a Hollywood cinema thriller, he flew out of Japan on the new year eve. Reports, which are denied by Carlos wife Carole Ghosn, say that he escaped from his house in a box for musical instruments, traveled by road for six hours to the Kansai International Airport to avoid being spotted at Tokyo, boarded a waiting private charter Bombardier jet and landed at Beirut via Turkey. He must have traveled under a fake new passport and managed to fool the Border Control Police and customs authorities of Japan. It was certainly a very meticulously planned escape, with the help of a big powerful organization, that foxed Japan. His wife called his escape her best ever gift and he jubilantly said that he had not escaped from justice but had escaped from injustice and political persecution in Japan. He said that the justice system in Japan is rigged, where guilt is presumed. Ghosn is a hero in Lebanon, where a postage stamp was issued in his honor in 2017 and whereupon his arrival billboards greeted him saying, ‘We are all Carlos Ghosn’. Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Japan and thus he is now safe there, under the armed protection of the state.

Japan has a 99% conviction rate for such corporate financial crimes and if convicted the celebrated Ghosn would be in jail for 15 years, in addition to hefty fines that he would pay. Perhaps the fact that Japan had received information from Switzerland and Dubai, of his undisclosed bank accounts there, must have hastened his desperate and successful escape from Japan, presently making him the most celebrated international fugitive. With Japan on his heels, Ghosn’s corporate career comes to an end, since he will have to be now permanently parked in Lebanon, fearing his arrest if he travels to any other nation, particularly where Japan has an extradition treaty. He now says that he will tell his story to the media starting next week and he is bound to receive the most lucrative book offers for his story.

India has also had its share of economic offenders and financial fugitives, with Nirav Modi, Mehul Chokshi, Jatin Mehta, Sandesaras and Vijay Mallya being in the high profile list. The escape of Carlos Ghosn from Japan points to a larger picture that we need to bear in mind.

1. Japan’s conviction rate of 99% for financial crimes that scared the life out of Ghosn, needs to be emulated by our agencies like the ED and the CBI, whose conviction rate is a pathetic mere fraction thereof. If we want to stop mega frauds and financial crimes, then our investigation agencies need to significantly improve their quality of work, so that convictions of such criminals becomes a reality.
2. In India, the big criminals who defraud the system of lakhs of crores, generally manage to flee and go scot-free, while the small innocent ones who cannot defend themselves get punished. It needs to be the reverse and it is the big daddies of crime that game the system, must be punished first.
3. It is time to punish the biggest of scamsters, to serve as a deterrent to all others, or else there will be no end to the saga of financial crimes in India. We have seen no top corporate honchos humiliated and jailed, like Ghosn faced in Japan.
4. Financial criminals who cheat the system and dupe public money must be very severely punished. No Indian financial criminal has faced punishment in jail for 15 years plus heavy penalties, which stared in Carlos Ghosn’s face in Japan.
5. India needs to have extradition treaties with every possible nation, or else a Mehul Chokshi will escape to Antigua, just as a Ghosn escaped to Lebanon.

The Ghosn story is far from over. Keep watching.