Carlos Ghosn: How I escaped Japan
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
It seems to me that this was a corporate coup with assistance from the prosecutors office. The plan was Ghosn would be arrested, admit guilt straightaway, possibly under some questionable interrogation[1] and then get a fine/suspended sentence. Nissan could be free from Ghosn with a minimum of fuss.
Of course, it didn't go down that way, but Ghosn fleeing the country was probably the next best thing. Public opinion in Japan generally seems to be "Why would you run if you are innocent?" and the case is forgotten.
It will be interesting to see if any revelations come out in Kelly's trial (currently underway).
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html
I read the articles a long time ago so I may be off by a bit but I recall that when I did the math Carlos Ghosn had a personal net worth of at least ~$115 million _at the time he was accused of embezzling just a few million dollars._ It's like a millionaire stealing $20,000. Certainly possible, but more likely to be some sort of misunderstanding given the circumstances.
I don't expect this to be a popular comment. But the charges never made much sense to me. And normally in cases of corporate embezzlement there isn't such a compelling alternate narrative/conspiracy to explain what happened.
It seems like an easy way to remove a Gaijin from a Nipponjin-position. Or maybe he made some other execs unhappy behind the scenes.
> Why were none of the Japanese executives arrested?
Then zero arrest is expected, or you have any suspicion?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/09/nissan-ceo-saikawa-to-step-d...
So she was actually innocent (in the legal system sense, at least) of the crime she was initially accused of, but guilty of obstructing the investigation.
Similar to the Ghosn story, actually: he's guilty of jumping bail and whatnot no matter what's going on with the substantive issue of embezzlement.
Kids, if the FBI comes a-knocking, shut. Your. Fat. Fucking. Mouth.
Ask for a lawyer and the shut the fuck up. It doesn't matter if you're innocent.
If you talk to the Feds and make a mistake, you can be charged with a felony for lying to to federal agents. Did you talk to that guy on Saturday, May 20th, 2017? Who knows? The Feds do, and if you don't remember precise details, you got yourself a felony charge. Felony. Even if you are innocent of anything else, you lied to a Federal investigator.
Shut up. Ask for a lawyer. And shut up.
(I'm OK with the downvotes, if this helps someone remember to shut up and get a lawyer)
It's always shut the fuck up Friday. 7 days a week.
It's a glaring injustice that a completely random innocent person can be prosecuted for saying "I don't know"
It's a shame that people who do have an option to not to live in hellholes, and having functioning democracy can't lift a finger to do something about that instead of doing nothing, while rambling on internet forums.
The point was that it's not impossible, merely because Ghosn was rich, that he didn't do the deed.
Edit: Why the downvotes?
“If requested by the charging state, US states and territories must extradite anyone charged with a felony, misdemeanor, or even petty offense in another US state or territory, even if the offense is not a crime in the custodial state.”
As far as I’m aware this holds true of international extradition too. That’s kinda the whole point—you can’t escape justice by picking a destination that doesn’t prosecute your crime.
>> That’s kinda the whole point—you can’t escape justice by picking a destination that doesn’t prosecute your crime.
You most certain can; combine poor relations with the country requesting extradition and you can avoid "justice" indefinitely.
Dual criminality is a standard provision in most (nearly all? all?) extradition treaties. Canada's treaty with the USA for example says:
> Persons shall be delivered up according to the provisions of this Treaty for any of the offenses listed in the Schedule annexed to this Treaty, which is an integral part of this Treaty, provided these offenses are punishable by the laws of both Contracting Parties by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year.
and the US-Japan treaty says:
> Extradition shall be granted in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty for any offense listed in the Schedule annexed to this Treaty, which forms an integral part of this Treaty, when such an offense is punishable by the laws of both Contracting Parties by death, by life imprisonment, or by deprivation of liberty for a period of more than one year [...]
I upvoted it.
No, they do it because of the more specific Extradition Clause, not the Full Faith and Credit clause.
I wasn’t purposefully making the comparison but rather attempting to demonstrate that extradition is meant to follow the laws of the place where the crime took place rather than the place where the fugitive resides.
Unlike the US domestic situation, sovereign states are necessarily allowed some leeway in choosing which requests to honor. However it was my understanding that it is generally not a requirement that the alleged crime be illegal on both jurisdictions. Thank you for providing evidence to the contrary.
Generally, no, its not.
> As far as I’m aware this holds true of international extradition too.
It is not, it is a feature of US domestic law from the extradition clause of the US Constitution, which reflects the much closer association of US states than foreign nations.
Dual criminality is the normal standard in extradition treaties (including the US-Japan one), though nothing (except perhaps individual rights under local law) prevents a state from extraditing persons when not required by a treaty, or deporting foreigners back to their country of nationality with similar effect.
You couldn't be more right here. Been working with japanese companies for years so those things do not come as a surprise.
There is a lot of corporate fraud happening in Japan, particularly at large corporations. No way Ghosn was innocent - however at the same time all japanese at Nissan board were well aware of what was happening and benefitted from that. Were they arrested you may ask? Certainly no. They took the power and if you ask me, I can't be more bearish on Nissan's future.
I suspect from now on companies with subsidiaries in Japan will be sure their top level meetings don't take place on Japanese soil.
Maybe. All our information comes from journalists, who occasionally gets things wrong. After that, it's down to belief. We haven't seen the evidence nor any counter evidence. All we have is a biased article.
For me, leaving aside all of the dramatic details, we have the word of a Lebanese business man and his supporters versus the word of the Japanese government and the board of Nissan. Perhaps naive, but I'd tend to believe the Japanese government over some rando. It's not a banana republic over there. The government does not habitually collude with natives to squeeze foreigners. It's not like the UAE. Agreed, that's not evidence of anything, but as long as we're just talking "what seems much more likely" - what seems much more likely to me, is that the guy embezzled, got caught, had to flee the country and - unlike so many of these dreary, sordid little tales - he caught the ear of a sympathetic journalist to spin a sympathetic tale of escape and adventure.
Well, he will be tried in absentio if that's allowed in Japan, and the evidence against him will be entered into the public record. Then maybe we'll each have a better idea of what we're talking about.
When you get caught stealing something in Japan they will take you into custody for over 20 days, no bail, no nothing. I believe it's 10 days and then 1 or 2 extensions(but I don't remember the details). This only applies to foreigners.
Basically the idea is that the only real punishment they can give you is whatever they can give you for breaking the rules before you flee the country.
But yeah, there's obviously also an aspect of racism there.
After watching this, i could understand why Carlos Ghosn did what he did; it is an abhorrent "Hostage Justice" system.
The editing is probably benign in intention, but I would much rather hear a longer and perhaps more convoluted explanation than something cut-for-convenience where I'm not sure if I'm hearing and understanding the interviewee's answers the way he said them.
Every tourist to Japan who might have a tendency to "let down their hair" needs to watch this video.
I didn't really find any problems with comprehension either. I'm just not sure if the understanding I get is affected by editing.
I appreciate the effort to explain the system in general, and I suppose also from a foreigner or tourist point of view. I have been to Japan twice, and while I'm not the type that's likely to get into trouble, it's always good to understand the culture you're visiting.
For what? A criminal is claiming his innocence, classical story, people do that all the time. Without further proof, why should anyone bother people who are probably innocent, and more important: powerful. That could seriously harm your career if you do something to lightly. Who would do that in this situation?
The other problem is the pretty strict chain of responsability people in Japan maintain. Especially in the legal system, there is a very strong and infamous believe that people do not fail in their work, and questioning it is a serious matter. This is a long known problem with japan, but it's quite hard to fix this. So even in a regular harmless case, hardly anyone would do something to insult someone else by questioning the result of their work.
Oh you sweet summer child. Why, indeed? Why would anyone bother an innocent, powerful person?
https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/carlos-ghosn-and-japans-99-c...
> Japan’s often-cited conviction rate of over 99 percent is a percentage of all prosecuted cases, not just contested cases. It is eye-catching, but misleading, since it counts as convictions those cases in which defendants pleaded guilty. If the U.S. conviction rate were calculated in a similar manner it would also exceed 99 percent since so few cases are contested at trial (in FY 2018 only 320 of the total number of 79,704 federal defendants were acquitted at trial).
I was curious why I kept seeing this article coming up as an attack on Japan when the text clearly doesn't come across that way & yep, this link is the first google result for "japan 99% conviction rate"
> In Japan this occurs in the context of forced confessions during detention of suspects whose lawyers are not present during interrogation. In the United States a similar danger is present in plea bargaining. There is a well-known “trial penalty” — a defendant who spurns the prosecutor’s offer of a plea bargain will generally receive a significantly higher sentence if found guilty at trial. Both systems struggle to provide oversight of confessions and plea bargains, respectively, by means of judicial hearings.
For the same reason the company was able to put out a press release minutes after his arrest.
It was rumoured that the house he lives in in Beirut actually belongs to Nissan and they've been trying to get him kicked out, but with little success.
Nissan went to crap when they took a controlling stake in JATCO and started using those god awful CVT's in everything, and then stopped putting any effort into their sports cars to keep them competitive enough to lure enthusiasts to their brand. I owned a GT-R for several years and it was a great car, but it's going on 13 years of the same generation and the 370z is hardly any different from the 350z that first came out in 2002. I could rant for hours, I used to love Nissan. I'm hoping the 400z will turn things around for them in the eyes of enthusiasts if it's priced reasonably.
Results at 3m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDP7Pty8Qnw&t=130s
Probably a bit of acting, but Jeremy Clarkson had to be carted off the track while driving one because he injured his neck on a particularly tight corner.
do activate the subtitles!
Best MOTORing January 2011. ""Super Sports Battle in Sugo""
Cars: NISSAN GT-R, MB SLS AMG, FERRARI 430 SD, PORSCHE 911Turbo S, AUDI R8 5.2
Drivers:Keiichi ""DK"" Tsuchiya Naomi Hattori, Takayuki Kinoshita, Seiji Ara, Tetsuya Tanaka
I have heard they are improving, but by the time they figure them out the ICE car will probably be utterly obsolete.
I used to live just down the street from the place. Lovely neighborhood.
>It was during a period of house arrest, when Mr Ghosn was told he would not be allowed to have any contact with his wife, Carole, that he decided to find a way out.
Holy cow - that's an insane system for a 'modern western democracy'...
Btw, strange that Japan is called as 'Western' - perhaps the better term is OECD? Same goes for NZ, I guess.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827906 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/asia/11japan.html
There's commonly two cited reasons for that:
- Prosecutors won't even charge you unless they're completely convinced they've got an open-and-shut case.
- Because of this, judges are likely to assume you are guilty if charged.
Additionally, wrongful convictions are extremely embarrassing for judges, prosecutors, and their offices. For this reason they are unlikely to admit mistakes and other judges are under extreme pressure not to overturn convictions.
Now I also find that "insane" but it isn't out of line with other "modern western democracies"
He couldn't meet his wife seems like an unreasonable condition for someone out on bail. Also, is the justice system in Japan so backed up that he would have to wait years for it go to trial ?
They also dont do trial by jury, but inquisitorial judges who you have to prove your innocence too. The judges their dont like you making them go to trial, so good luck proving your case, after all you should have confessed already.
Also Japanese conditions in their detention systems makes the American system look down right palatial. The whole system is designed to punish even moreso than the American system.
We can hold hands at the bottom of the pit, no need for a winner.
> litteraly lie to you
BTW in a lot of countries they are basically immune to perjury, so this is just par for course
https://gaijinass.com/2017/03/30/brutal-realities-of-prison-...
Japan: 40 incarcerated per 100k population [1] USA: 655 incarcerated per 100k population [2]
[1] https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/japan [2] https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america
2) "More likely to behave similarly" is a considerably wider net than just crime rates
3) I think the mainstream view is that East Asians of all stripes commit considerably less crime than average. It's certainly true of violent crime, which is something I've looked in to.
This point was used to defend Japan's justice system as being far more benign than the US.
However, Japan's justice system may in fact be far more unforgiving that the US' if Americans are, in general, more likely to commit crime. Which is perfectly fair point to make (although inconclusive for various reasons).
If (for whatever reason) Americans are more likely to commit more crimes, they are, all else being equal, more likely to be in jail.
Of course many things can be true at the same time. Japan can have a brutal justice system and have a very docile, law abiding population. Maybe the brutality caused them to be docile. Or, America can have an abusive justice system, and a population that needs to be more incarcerated than others.
Either way, the criminality of the Japanese is a relevant factor if America's incarceration rate is made relevant
You could also look at the rate of crimes per capita in each country. For instance, murders per capita: 4.96 in the U.S. vs 0.26 in Japan [0]. If we take this to represent base-rate criminality in that population, then we have a 19:1 US:Japan murder ratio, with only a 16:1 US: Japan incarceration ratio. Japan incarcerates more per unit murder.
Of course this is a toy model, it's all a big feedback loop, etc., but I hope it serves to illustrate the point.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Though I do not use the example myself, preferring the murder rate example, the parent's suggestion is a reasonable way to control for this inter-society difference. I would bet that Japanese in the U.S. evince rates of criminality more similar to those of Japanese in Japan than to the rest of American society. It's an empirical question; whether merely asking the question is racist or not given your particular sentiments about what's racist is beside the point.
What makes you believe that? If true, what might cause that to be the case?
As for why, there are a few reasons. One interesting one is selection effects (immigrants to a new country are not a random sample of the old country's population). There is culture, of course, probably the biggest factor, as well as other inheritances (material goods / wealth, genes, disease burden...).
I agree with you that we can't tell from a single gene whether someone is likely to be a criminal or not. I'd like you to consider this example, where hopefully I only use premises you already believe:
Some people are predisposed to becoming addicted to drugs. We can make better-than-chance bets about who these people are based on their genomes. We also know that people who are addicted to drugs are more likely to be on the wrong side of the law (and, sadly, are often by definition on the wrong side of the law). So, we conclude that, given someone's genome, we can make better-than-chance bets about that person's likelihood of being on the wrong side of the law.
It's a simplistic example, but hopefully that helps get the idea across. Doing this sort of thing isn't super practical right now, but it will be soon! [oh boy.]
Example of flawed reasoning similar to yours: genes have probably an impact on the way we speak (it's impacting the shape of our tongue somehow, etc etc). So maybe the French have their accent due to some genetic factors, and we could predict someone's accent looking at their genes. Well it turns out in practice, if you have "French genes" and are born and raised in a US environment, you'll have an American accent indistinguishable from someone with "US genes"
The same goes with criminal behavior.
I agree culture is the biggie (education is part of culture).
Your example gets at a correlation that can be used to make good predictions. Better-than-chance bets. The example I gave with drug addiction supposes the reader already believes that genes have a causal relationship with drug addiction. That is, a propensity to be, say, an alcoholic can be in your genome and not a result of environmental factors.
That's some heroic effort in defense of America's high incarceration rate.
Someone else wrote wrote " Not trying to handwave away issues with the Japanese system, but scale seems relevant here. Japan: 40 incarcerated per 100k population [1] USA: 655 incarcerated per 100k population [2]"
So I read your post in that context. The conversation seemed to me to be about whether the American or Japanese justice system is "bad". Fairness would seem to be an aspect of "good" or "bad"... if you weren't trying to argue the American justice system was "good" I've lost the context of what you were trying to say.
In either case, whether it's racist or not is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Yes. That is the claim that is racist.
I appreciate you engaging. It's fun and important to talk about stuff like this.
Criminality might correlate with ethnicity. Assuming this means causality is the thing that is racist.
So is this the kind of thing you measure with calipers, or…
Inquisitorial systems are pretty common among civil law countries e.g. much of Europe, and not intrinsically better or worse than the adversarial system usually seen in common law countries -- indeed they are sometimes used by the latter for specific purposes like summary offences and coronial inquests.
If you no-showed at work for 3 weeks, would you lose your job? But if you confess, you could be out today.
Here is an account of being arrested and detained in Japan[1]. It's worth a read, especially given the ending.
[1] https://nymag.com/vindicated/2016/11/truth-lies-and-videotap...
For comparison, back in the Land of the Free, here's a kid in New York who was jailed for three years on Rikers Island for a similar false accusation of theft:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law
The 3 years might be (though I'm not convinced for some jurisdictions), but the overall shape of the case is, I think, depressingly common in the US...
Didn't America set up their system after the peace treaty? They literally wrote the constitution, no?
>Men were killed with piping, work tools, and crude homemade knives called shanks. One man was partially decapitated after being thrown over the second-tier balcony with a noose around his neck. The corpse was then dragged down and hacked up. A fire had been set in the gymnasium to burn a pile of corpses, but it had gotten out of control and burned through the roof. Besides the fire that had been set in the Psychology Wing, a fire was also set in the Protestant Chapel. The Protestant Chaplain had been nicknamed "Ax Handle" for his participation in the Night of the Ax Handles four years earlier. The Catholic Chapel next door was left untouched. Situated across the hall from the main control center, the prison library also was only touched by smoke. A third fire had been set in the records office, burning all records that could have been used as evidence related to the prisoners' civil rights claims in the Duran Consent Decree.
I think the country that has a justice system where being blowtorched until your brain explodes is a possible consequence of detention compares unfavorably to the country that has zero prison riots. It's also worth noting that the Human Rights Watch report on prison conditions in Japan contains zero mentions of the word "rape"—let alone "gang rape". Is it so hard to admit that they have to be doing something right?
Put yourselves in the shoes of a Japanese citizen—what could possibly make you look at American prison conditions and think "wow, I wish we had that instead", riots, gang rape, drugs, and all? What aspects of Japanese justice are so intolerable that they make all "palatial" by comparison? It's true that Japanese guards are strict—are Supermax guards so much nicer?
I think the country that has the highest incarceration in the world could learn something from the country that enjoys the lowest incarceration rate in the developed world. Whether it's civilization arrogance or some pathological aversion to discipline, I don't know—but it seems bizarre to me that a prison system where you could end up with a mouthful of your own severed genitals could serve as a model to anyone.
As for confessions, here's another example of the superior American way.
>Several hours into the interrogation, Scott told the detectives he thought he needed a lawyer, an attempt to invoke his constitutional right to have an attorney present during questioning. But APD detectives testified last week they believed Scott was only thinking about asking for a lawyer—the same response they gave at Springsteen's trial last summer. When Springsteen asked about a lawyer during his interrogation, detectives left the room. When they returned, they promptly changed the subject.
>And in the Scott interrogation's most infamous moment, Detective Merrill brought a revolver into the interrogation room to "help" Scott remember what he might've done that night at the yogurt shop through some "role playing." Gun in hand, Merrill walked around, then stood behind Scott and jabbed him in the head with what appeared to be the barrel of the gun. Merrill testified that it wasn't the gun but his finger. Nonetheless, the few seconds of video are startling. While the state could argue that the moment occurred well into the confession and couldn't have affected previous admissions, what does it take to render a confession false?
Although this figure is is regularly sited in the context of Ghosn's decision to flee the country this statistic is misleading since in Japan this figure counts cases where the defendant pleads guilty. So this 99% figure applies to all prosecuted cases not just contested cases. If the US were to use the same calculation the conviction rate would be about the same. I believe it was Ghosn's team who first referenced this statistic in the wake of his escape and it was something of a stroke of PR genius as it seems to find its way into nearly all coverage of Ghosn's escape. And these references are seemingly always without a comparative context. The following is a good read on this statistic:
https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/carlos-ghosn-and-japans-99-c...
However, Carlos Ghosn's case was not simple some street crime uncovered by local cops, it was investigated by the special investigation section of the Tokyo prosecutors office. Cases brought by them are far less likely to be dropped. The defendant more or less has to prove their innocence.
The power of prosecutors in the current system is clearly out of balance, but it doesn't seem to show signs of correcting anytime soon.
[1]https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...
Sorry, but it's a sign of a justice system very out of whack and not something to defend.
People are only okay with it because most people don't have any interaction with law enforcement, let alone the justice system.
I was in no way defending that system at all. I was just pointing out that the 99% statistic is constantly thrown about in Ghosn discussions without ever mentioning what the conviction percentage is anywhere else. And if you use the US as a a standard of comparison then that statistic is actually quite high as well. And if use the same calculation as Japan then the US is also above 99%.
If someone says "the life expectancy for women in my country is 88", then without comparing that to somewhere else perhaps your own country then you don't really know if you should consider 88 high or low or normal. Anyway the link I provided discusses comparative justice systems and why this is, including your first point.
What I managed to find easily just now in https://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2012/12... page 9 has: "Of the 87,709 defendants terminated during Fiscal Year 2012, 80,963, or 93 percent, either pled guilty or were found guilty."
So quite high, but not anything like over 99%.
This is federal cases, though, so maybe state cases have higher enough volume and conviction rates to make the overall number over 99%? Again, I would love to see hard data.
[0] https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/carlos-ghosn-and-japans-99-c...
Edit: looking at your linked PDF I think the above quote is missing the thousands of misdemeanors dismissed by judges. This just goes the show the difficulty of comparing legal systems using a single number from each.
Because Japan doesn't have a plea bargain system. That 99% figure is very similar to the conviction+plea bargain rate in e.g. the US.
Plea bargains are included in conviction counts.
You can get detained without any solid proof on anything for 23 days, but immediately upon arrest you will get put in contact with a lawyer if you have one, or can request the 'on duty lawyer'.
If you don't have a lawyer, you get assigned a 'public attorney', but even the public attorneys aren't as bad as in the US. They are just normal lawyers that are required by law to ALSO take cases for people as 'public attorneys', so they are usually very good.
During detainment you can request contact to your lawyer at any moment outside of the regular lawyer visits all few days.
Source: I went through this. Throwaway for obvious reasons.
It’s also not ridiculous? She isn’t his lawyer. He’s accused of a multibillion dollar fraud. And he was clearly a flight risk, one she personally amplified.
A) He was not in prison at the time B) Even incarcerated prisoners in most countries are allowed visits from their family C) It appears that keeping them apart is what actually amplified his flight risk, not letting them meet.
Only when there's a risk of the suspect colluding with others and concealing the evidence.
IANAL, but I read that there were good reasons that the prosecution believes he does it. But this system is criticized today as it gives too much power to the prosecutors.
I think the biggest problem is, as you mentioned, the slowness and bureaucracy of Japan's justice system, which I guess is still mostly paper-based. If it would take only a couple of weeks, he might have not done it. Everything is so slow to change here, and it's not just the justice system. I feel that Japan's inflexibility is slowly consuming the country.
> The large box carrying Ghosn was never x-rayed or checked by customs officials, because it was too big to fit inside the x-ray machine
The security theater we have to go through in the airport is just that: a pathetic security theater. You have a large box, that's definitively something that you gotta check. If you can't x-ray it, then at least open it?
A country does care about what is coming out of its territory. If you have a high incidence of drugs coming out of Japan, the country will be flagged by the other countries. This makes shipping both expensive and difficult.
> The security risk of taking an uninspected box on a private jet is pretty low, and private jets routinely have fewer security checks.
I don't have the stats, but I'd argue that on a % basis, it's less likely that a single traveler is carrying something illegal than a private jet owner. I think the reason private jet owner do not get "scanned" is their status. That would annoy these persons and Japan (and most countries) do not want to annoy them.
Brutal. Either they're really good at building the necessary evidence or they're just ruthless when it comes to criminal justice. Based on the other comments in this thread, it seems the latter. It's interesting to me how a society that prides itself on honor can act so dishonorably when it comes to human rights. This applies to their work ethics as well. They have the most fascinating culture in my opinion, but the warts are really ugly
> This is a comic that Norrin wrote. It is about the Ace Attorney system of law, in which your client is not only guilty until proven innocent, but also guilty until someone else is proven guilty. If you want to get away with murder in this universe, all you need to do is not wander into the courtroom after the system has inevitably arrested the wrong person.
Academic work I’ve seen suggests it’s basically down to case selection:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468111
But what also fascinates me is that people can so easily come up with strong opinions about a culture based on limited information I.e saying “a society that prides itself on honor can act so dishonorably”…
It’s weird, people talk about Japan like it’s an alien planet. Klingons may have been based upon the Japanese but I assure you Japanese life is not very much like Star Trek.
https://www.nippon.com/en/people/e00156/railroaded-one-woman...
That isn't actually quite the case. Part of that amazing conviction rate comes from simply not prosecuting cases that they have a chance of losing. So they have an abysmal prosecution rate for crimes like rape.
Honor has different definitions for different cultures.
Are there any society that does not? This seems a meaningless, often parotted phrase about Japanese culture by people who do not understand it.
That exact same sentence could be applied to the treatment of black and brown people in the United States. Do you remember stop-and-frisk in New York City? What percentage was black and brown people? It was an appalling programme and gross miscarriage of justice. And that happened (figuratively) in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-carlos-ghosn-esc...
Bear in mind that this was filmed with the cooperation of the authorities, there are plenty of stories about abuses beyond what is shown.
Also I find it strange that the names of these 2 guys were known to everyone in the world immediately after Ghosn escaped.
Imagine a pair of spetznaz break Derek Chauvin out of the US and bring him to another country. They get caught.
Too bad these foreign special forces got caught?
If so, we agree. But that there are no consequences of breaking another country's sovereignty the way Ghosn and those American goons believe they're entitled to, is ridiculous. Actually, it's American exceptionalism.
Ghosn would have been desperate enough to provide it.
^ Hoping this doc will make its way to American television.. maybe PBS/Frontline?
"Nothing got x-rayed, not even our backpacks”[1]
I have to believe someone involved had observed similar behavior at this location prior to this escape operation.
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-carlos-ghosn-esc...
How I escaped Japan in a private jet
Japan’s notoriously ruthless criminal justice system is getting a face lift https://qz.com/693437/japans-notoriously-ruthless-criminal-j...
A legal review of why Japan high conviction rate is bad https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/legal-review-why-japan-high-c...
The second just states “little to do with the assumption that prosecutors only choose cases they are confident they can win” but doesn’t do anything to back up that claim with data. It just discusses aspects of the law that are different in Japan/the US.
Would be more interesting to refute the academic work on this:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468111
This article posted elsewhere also seems interesting:
https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/carlos-ghosn-and-japans-99-c...
So, does anyone have anything a bit more detailed and systematic than the above? Also curious about treatment in Japanese prisons as compared to the US/elsewhere.
Ghosn was pushing the merger. His plan was the headquarters the merged holding company outside both Japan and France where he would have yet even less supervision.
Ghosn pillaged Nissan and Renault, and a merger was his perfect chance to cover the tracks.
French article: https://www.lesechos.fr/amp/1159576
How secure is he in Beruit? If Japan really wanted him badly, I would guess he would be pretty easy for Israeli Mossad to pick up.
The Mossad only does what's in the national interest of Israel, they are not bounty hunters for hire.
If Japan really wants Ghosn they will either have to send their own team with all the headaches that entails and/or they will need to negotiate with the various groups currently in control of Lebanon... and given they're falling apart, failing to secure food, medicine and fuel for electricity generation, a rich multi-millionaire with a private security force isn't exactly at the top of their priority list.
If he were funding Hezbollah (other than through paying taxes in Lebanon), they'd have gotten him anyway by now.
-- You believe the charges or prosecution is being unfairly conducted
-- You believe you are innocent
-- You believe public opinion is on your side
-- You have a more favorable jurisdiction you can flee to
Is it up to you to decide that you're in the right, and if you have resources, should escape the legal system?
I'm sure many people feel these points when they're being prosecuted. Are they to decide? Or is it just that he's rich and had the means to act on these opinions?
People at every level do what they can to evade justice systems, and of course the richer you are the more dramatic that will be. IMO it's more relevant for us to judge for ourselves whether he was right or not. Did he flee a system that we consider fair and reasonable, or one that's arbitrary and unjust?
I find it really interesting that Ghosn (I’m just gonna call him “Ghost,” k) was head of two other gigantic car monoliths and actually reduced Nissan’s expenditures. Given Japan’s “employed for life” culture that still pervades a great deal of companies, I wonder if that rubbed people the wrong way. Pure speculation, I don’t know what cuts were made. What I find really impressive is that he can run a car company so well that he’s recruited by other companies to take the reins for a while. Talent that can migrate among organizations and boost them all a little bit. I suppose what works at one will probably work at another.
To get to that role, I wonder if he started in an executive space or rode a small car-related company up to the stratosphere and then moved laterally, or what.
Complimentary joke: He is one of the quietest musical instruments around.