How Carlos Ghosn Was Smuggled Out of Japan
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I am not very comfortable with glorifying this story, why exactly this guy's life and family is more important than the airline professional's?
Although I would watch the movie about it, this whole ordeal feels wrong as it resembles a story where justice is only for the wealthy and collateral damage to unrelated people's lives is O.K. as if those people are not real humans but NPC that just vanish when you're done with them.
That would be my excuse also if I got caught.
If he was getting his fair share of the money and protection he would have been boarding the plane with the rest of the team as it is obvious that the authorities would be coming after him.
Why they are coming after him? Because Ghosn entered Lebanon legally, exposing the plane he came in, thus compromising everyone in the logistics of the operation while protecting the reportedly well-paid organizers.
This Ghosn guy looks like the kind of a car company CEO that would crunch the number and decide not to do a recall of the fatally faulty cars if the legal fees are less than the cost of a recall.
If he was one of the conspirators, why he is not together with the rest of the team? AFAIK there was no police chase, Ghosn simply did not protect the identities of the people involved in the logistics by entering Lebanon openly instead of using the box.
If his family was not threatened, why he did it then? Why Carlos did not even try to protect his identity, why the guy did not run with the rest of the team and enjoy his millions somewhere nice?
But hey, He is special so it is O.K. for him not to face trial and land other people in jail in the process and those people should face a trial. Right?
I'd be surprised if Ghosn thought about this in any other way. People tend to assert all kinds of evilness to wealthy top managers when in the end most of them are just ordinary people who made the right career choices at the right time.
If anything, it seems like he chose to save some money by not paying off the logistics team and prefered some comfort by not entering Lebanon openly instead of in a box, exposing the logistics team.
I think you wrongly assume that he is vilified due to him being rich. Non-CEO people who cause harm to others, forcing people to do things "or else" are also vilified. Rich or not, guilty or not, it is not O.K. to harm people for your own wellbeing.
If he was ill, should he also be allowed to harvest organs from living and unwilling people because otherwise, he will die?
I'm pretty sure you know that this probably isn't what happened here.
Who's saying that? The CEO looks guilty to me, but I don't know the details of the case.
> But as Ghosn’s speech went on, entropy took hold. He jumped rapidly from allegation to allegation at a pace that was difficult to follow even for observers versed in the latest Ghosniana. At one point he committed the No. 1 faux pas for foreigners in Japan, comparing his arrest to the attack on Pearl Harbor. There were flashes of arrogance, with Ghosn describing Nissan as “in the dirt” before he arrived and boasting that “20 books of management were written about me.” He devoted a significant stretch of time to a relatively minor issue—whether his comped use of a room at Versailles for his 2016 wedding celebration constituted a sort of kickback for Renault’s sponsorship of the palace—providing a convoluted explanation that he later summed up with, “If I had thought there had been an ethical problem, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Let's ask this question after the movie comes, even better let's ask the kids of the guy in jail to rate the movie about the tragedy of an imprisoned rich CEO that their father was forced to help and go to jail. Let's hope that the mother has a decent income so that they can afford the ticket to the movie.
He will probably lose his job, his family will go through an ordeal and possibly poverty until the case closes.
Or maybe he willingly participated and took some serious money, who knows? Unlike with Ghosn, his incident would be put on trial.
Kowing if he did that is dependent on there being a court decision.
Look, I don't like that some probably innocent plane guy is in jail more than anyone else but judging people just because they are rich is also wrong.
Also I'm pretty sure it wasn't Gosn that threatened him but rather the security guy that put together the plan.
Is this the reverse of "I just followed orders"? Can the cartel bosses in Mexico not being guilty of the actions of their security guys? Maybe all they wanted was to do a trade but these pesky security guys keep killing people brutally.
I am pretty sure that Ghosn is intelligent enough to know that as soon as he exposes his route of escape, the people involved in the operation will be exposed. He chooses to expose these when protecting the people he paid.
Was Carlos assuming that the security contractor works for the money and likes being not in jail just like him but airline personnel would do illegal things as part of the rent contract and not having problems with being exposed?
Presumption of innocence is important.
Example: there's a locally well known actor where I live that was accused of having child porn on his computer a few months ago. The press obviously jumped all over that and he was plastered over all the front pages. Fast forward two months and it's actually looking like he isn't actually guilty and won't be dragged into court. The result for him however is that he's broke, got no more acting gigs and his kids are bullied in school.
Bad result. Because people didn't assume he's innocent until PROVEN guilty. I'd be 100% happy to trade off some exec that steals money from a company getting to skip jail for nobody who's innocent ever ending up in jail.
For example, it was O.K. to think that Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos a fraud and express this opinion well before the court decided that.
Therefore I think this is not a glorious story of an innocent CEO persecuted by the baddies, I laid out my reasons for that. You are free to think otherwise but if you want to participate in the discussion you are expected to build up your position and defend it. "Let's wait for the court decision" is not a good argument, especially when a subject is a person who runs from a court decision.
That's the part I don't agree with. I don't think it's fair.
It's also unlikely that I'll be able to change your mind on this matter or that you'll be able to change mine during the course of a few comments on HN, so we can agree to disagree :)
He didn't, these facts are the result of an investigation
If you insist, we can rephrase it as "He didn't try to hide the identities of the logistic personnel as he hid the people who organised the operation".
It is a very strong clue that they were not from the same team, in sense of willingness and contract.
What is an "unregistered plane"? Not even the US military has that (except maybe for very specific experimental aircraft and even then).
> for example entering Lebanon the way he exited Japan
That's the reason for the stopover in Turkey. Anything else is spy movie territory.
It looks like I am going to choose the former, just so you know.
By your logic, are you also saying the United States makes a mockery of the criminal justice system?
So if you get convicted of a crime in the US, then you’d better pray to God that it isn’t handled by the DA.
Anyway I don't know how much you are helping the USA here in your argument. A deal in the US is often like:
"Look, kid. With this deal, you get 1 year in prison. If we choose to prosecute, you are looking at 30 years to life. Your call. Remember, you have a [kid|mother|girlfriend]."
Who would risk going up in court, even if you maybe didn't even do very much? It's basic economics. The risk is too great that jury is going to hate you, no matter what you did or didn't do. Better take the bargain and cut your losses.
Settlements, for civil cases, not so much, and I think it's an overall positive.
If the DA is able to construe a set of charges carrying a maximum multi-year or even multi-decade custodial sentence, and when the option of not even being able to be considered for parole can be added as a condition of your sentence — no matter what kind of prison behavior you show, or how you respond as a prisoner to rehabilitation or reconciliation programs — then the plea bargaining process itself begins to seem a lot like an extrajudicial and unconstitutional trial of the kind one is surprised a moral society would endorse.
USA has 95% convictions based on plea deals, so the investigation is only complete enough to convince the accused that he is isolated enough in his jail that he won’t be able to build a defense, but the accusation is never formally proved, it’s just the accused who agrees to admit crimes. Examples vary, for example pharmacists who are legally authorized to sell legal cannabis have been convicted because they couldn’t bring proof.
In France we have jihadists who get freed, rapists who get away with it because they are recently immigrated and « don’t have the western codes » (true quote from the judge), people who get French nationality after having assaulted a policeman; We also have people in jail for way lighter offenses, but who are public cases with lots of media pressure.
Although I’m all for a severe justice system, and process-based justice, I’m not convinced half of the convicts are there with a proven proof from the accusation ; rather, they couldn’t defend themselves.
One issue Ghosn mentioned is that his trial(s) was being delayed possibly until next year and beyond with his Japanese lawyer telling him that the whole thing could last up to 5 years.
Now, remember that the Japanese judiciary initially wanted to keep him in jail until his trial(s) and that the conditions of his bail were practically 'house arrest' with very limited contacts with his family and the world.
If I were 65 years old (as he is) and risked potentially having to stay years in jail/house arrest without trial in a foreign country and then risked up to 10 years in jail after that in a country that has a 99.6% conviction rate I would do whatever I could to get the f# out of there (whether I was guilty or innocent).
He had the means to do it and he did it. On a human level I cannot blame him.
Do you have any evidence to support that this is actually a good idea?
Or is it just revenge porn you’re after?
Given how inhumane it is, yeah, I think I would have tried to escape too
The fuck, why? Not at all obvious that this is illegal, and even if that’s the case it’s not at all obvious that this would be sufficiently illegal to justify arrest (and presumably extradition, which generally requires dual criminality).
Would you expect friends helping bail jumpers to be treated like this elsewhere? That’s not usually (ever?) the case.
With respect to two US citizens mentioned in the article (and there may be more), they may be extradited should Japan makes the request. The US does have an extradition treaty with Japan and the crimes mentioned above are within the purview of the treaty.[1]
[1] https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/volume%201203/v...
The federal Harboring statutes do not appear to cover skipping bail (until an arrest warrant is issued).
>obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice is a much more complicated topic, but I don't see any statute that would clearly fit this activity.
>aiding and abetting [the escape]
Would require the escape itself to be a crime in both jurisdictions, punishable with deprivation of liberty of more than one year.
IANAL, but I'm curious and able to read. The justice manual on justice.gov is a helpful resource.
- 18 U.S. Code § 1073. Flight to avoid prosecution or giving testimony [1]
- 18 U.S. Code § 752. Instigating or assisting escape [2]
- 18 U.S. Code § 1071. Concealing person from arrest [3]
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1073 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/752 [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071
Therefore it's not clear to me if skipping bail is covered by any of these laws (until after an arrest warrant is issued due to that bail violation).
When I first read about this story, I thought it was an open and shut case that Ghosn was guilty. But now I'd like to hear the full story behind the initial accusations.
See this from 2012 (with Ghosn being mentioned as the "most successful foreign CEO at a Japanese company". Well...) : https://www.ft.com/content/fb6974b0-9066-11e1-8cdc-00144feab...
That said, Ghosn has been accused of very similar things elsewhere: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sec-nissan/nissan-gho...
The real difference seems to be that he wasn't able to bribe his way out...
The public doesn't get terribly excited over crimes against shareholders. Ghosn's theory of the case is plausible and a good story, so the press will tend to entertain it. And with two oligarchical factions in a pissing match, one having better access to the tools of state doesn't really elevate its moral standing. In fact, they both seem to own parts of different states.
This plotline would be right at home in Billions. Probably get panned by critics for being over the top, honestly.
Some of this I already knew but I've learned a lot more from the Ghosn case.
This is hardly the only comparison you should make. In terms of legal protection the US is much better than Japan when you are under arrest.
Being part of the majority in the US already makes you less likely to be arrested, murdered by a "scared" police officer and your also less likely of being convicted if you are arrested. The police in Japan love to stop and frisk foreigners on bicycles or who are drinking on the street, but their interactions are atleast respectful and there's no fear of something being planted on you or you being shot.
The Japanese legal system doesn't tend to put people into it unless they believe they can convict. Ghoson was probably not going to get the most fair trial in Japan but he's shown he isn't above breaking the law so I don't know why the media is portraying him as some human rights activist against the Japanese system. The case the courts in Japan had against him just seems stronger.
If he had been in the US or another western country he simply would have used his money to get a deal from the prosecution. When he realized he couldn't he used that money to escape and pay for media PR.
Generally you xray for security, not for customs purposes. Nobody is going to bring a bomb on their own (or rented) private jet.
(https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/sicherheitsluecken-...)
Why is this a problem? The purported reason for checking luggage is security. Checking luggage going on to private jets does not provide a similar security benefit as it may for scheduled airline services.
For customs there are separate spot checks, but usually on arrival as it usually doesn’t make much sense to be concerned about illegal exports.
Human trafficking is a separate issue, FBO staff and private jet operators should be trained to combat such just like normal airlines do.
That training works, I’ve been on the receiving end of it as a suspected human trafficker. (My friend told the gate agent to look at my phone for his ticket because he doesn’t own one. We were both briefly detained until the airline had someone talk to him in his native language and verify that he’s there by his own free will)
> What if it was planted?
Many (most?) FBOs offer paid security checks if that’s something you’re concerned about. I see no reason for why these should be mandatory.
> What if it's smuggling?
Customs issue, separate from the security checks. Normally customs just does spot checks, it’d be super unusual to check everything.
That's an insane number. And though Ghosn could probably afford that, the cost/benefit would be off kilter.
Private Jet Flights were probably under $200k (source https://jettly.com/charter_cost_estimator)
Hiring a half dozen ex-marines to scout out an escape route, 3 months of planning, maybe $1mm at most...
That's a huge lowball.
His fortune was estimated at around $200 million going in and supposedly stands at closer to $100 million now (per sources like Bloomberg and CNBC). If necessary I'd spend $15 million / 15% of my $100 million for those ten years; that's an easy trade. Be modestly cautious and you'd get it back passively with little worry.