Carlos Ghosn’s Brazen Escape from Japan | Hacker News Reader

Carlos Ghosn’s Brazen Escape from Japan

wsj.com

83 pointswallflower184 comments

A popular narrative is that the choice is between Ghosn being guilty or a victim of a Nissan management coup d'etat.

This is a false dichotomy, it is also quite possible that illicit activity by Ghosn provided convenient ammunition to people with incentive to have him removed.

People pushing the binary narrative focus on how the Japanese prosecution seems over the top for what is essentially a financial reporting law violation. However, the reporting issues are only two of the allegations.

The other two seem more serious, breach of trust in getting Nissan to cover collateral for FX losses, and misappropriation of funds in which $15 million was sent to a Nissan dealership, a portion of which was then transferred to a company controlled by Ghosn.

Adding to these the French arrest warrant on charges of money laundering and abuse of company assets, which seem to include misuse of company funds to allegedly pay for a lavish personal party at Versailles, one must wonder if online Ghosn supporters are organic or reputation management staff.

It’s also largely fuelled by the negative experiences many foreigners, resident or tourist, have had with the Japanese police.

O: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/j4ccy4/how_being...

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/tcxseo/arrested_...

I tend to believe Ghosn here. He is definitely not a saint, but I don’t think he would have gotten a fair trial.

A professional video of the Versaille Ghosn's birthday payed by Renault-Nissan party was interestingly published on youtube.

The video is now private (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYhWZ0IYFSg) but for some reasons I have a backup of the video. This link is a fair re-upload: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Fz9ThQvH4

This is hilarious. All the money in the word and rich peoples’ best parties are worse than practically every 20 year old’s in their parents suburban house.

Asiatimes.com had a 4 part series on Ghosn. BusinessInsider as well iirc did a piece on him. Both are damning of Nissan and Japanese legal system. A related story also not broadcast loudly is that of an American lawyer that also got a taste of Japanese jails.

Ghosn is very credible here, if unlike WSJ, you wish to consider the facts. "[I]t is quite possible" is not factual matter.

This story involves industrial policy and interests of at least two major powers: France and Japan. In that scale of matters, Ghosn is a little guy. Good for him for escaping what sounds like hell.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/ghosn-shares-damning-new-docum...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/business/michael-taylor-c...

Sorry for offtopicness - could you please email me at hn@ycombinator.com?

Rather not associate pii with my hn account. Anything urgent?

Nothing urgent! I wanted to email you a repost invite.

Since:

1) He had essentially zero chance of being acquitted, and

2) He was the victim of Nissan executives who didn't like having a gaijin be their boss:

In his shoes, I would feel morally justified in escaping. Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty.

If you disagree with that, suppose Britney Griner somehow escaped from Russian "justice"? How would you feel then?

Edit. Everyone talking about hypothetical burglaries and $10 thefts from poor people: please explain what, exactly, Ghosn was accused of stealing, and from whom?

> Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty.

Can you explain this one?

Do you believe violent crimes require a violent penalty?

> Do you believe violent crimes require a violent penalty?

It’s certainly a common belief, imprisoning someone is inherently a violent penalty.

So the people stuck sorting out his mess, having to spend weeks in office going through the paperwork generated by one shell company after the other, should also file charges against him for aggravated assault?

People get paid for that, it’s a job.

So it is okay when we exchange captivity for money? So if we converted the money he stole into an hourly rate we could stick him into prison until the sun burns out and call it a job?

If someone else assigns you a job, it’s called slavery.

He clearly took payment in advance for it and knew spending time would be part of it if he was caught. So he basically signed up for it himself.

>Do you believe violent crimes require a violent penalty?

In many cases, yes.

No, but the only strong case for imprisonment as a punishment is to separate violent people from the rest of society.

That is a form of violence. Think about how many people commit suicide when they lose money for one reason or another.

Ghosn "the victim" is my favorite part of this post.

> Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty.

I'm not sure what you mean by it, can you please give an example?

For most people, money represents the time out of their lives it took to earn it.

If you steal $10 from someone, and they earned it from a job that pays $10/hour - you didn't steal $10, you stole an hour of their life.

That's the calculus when you are well off and secure, which is not most people. If you steal money from someone who makes 10 an hour, you have probably stolen their rent and ability to feed themselves, not their time. Worrying about time is for people who have the basics well covered.

That’s ridiculous. A crime is a crime, and stealing money - be it physically or on paper - has real repercussions to real people. It deserves more than a financial penalty.

>A crime is a crime

This is most certainly false. A crime is a violation of a law. Laws are passed by groups of people, not handed down by some infinitely wise and just being. For example, in many African nations, it is illegal to be gay. Would someone imprisoned for the "crime" of being gay be justified in escaping? Would Julian Assange be justified in escaping his dungeon for exposing the crimes of the US government?

I can't believe you would actually try this dead end argument. Let me guess, if somebody robs you tonight, they didn't commit a crime, they just violated a law that were passed by a group of people that punishes the impoverished who justified their actions.

>I can't believe you would actually try this dead end argument.

I cannot believe the stunning inability for people to understand that laws are not based on some sort of immutable, objective moral code but are invented by human beings. Do you think Harriet Tubman was a bad person because she helped those who violated the law? Would you have contacted the authorities immediately when you saw an escaped slave, due to their violation of the law?

What are you trying to get out of these debates you engage with yourself online? Find something better to do with your time and maybe you will be happier.

This is one reason why political crimes are treated with different considerations under international treaties and in the day to day norms of states. The right to asylum, for example, in one country to avoid prosecution in another country exists, and it is regularly exercised.

America regularly support people who are charged with normal crimes that have obvious political undertones, as they should. This is an unmitigated good.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Guangcheng

Other popular examples exist. These cases are also often very polarizing for the people of the country who is claimed to have been the victim of some political crime.

Note the definition of political crime ( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/political%20crime ) exactly makes the link: “political offenses … exclude any possibility of extradition.”

What makes up a political crime? By definition it can be subjective but some entire categories are usually included.

On the one hand, Assange is considered by many to be a journalist doing journalistic things, while others argue he committed espionage doing political things as some kind of spy. Prosecution for either is usually considered a political persecution worthy of asylum.

Ecuador granted Assange political asylum because of the U.S. investigation into Assange for his publications that were in the public interest.

I disagree about financial crimes deserving (only) financial penalties, but I think you're broadly right. It's all but impossible for a native to get a fair trial in Japan, let alone a foreigner...

> Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty.

Nah. Financial crimes cause real harm. And financial penalties frequently aren't sufficient disincentive.

Imagine that I have no assets but am a good talker. So I go out an launch an "investment fund" that is just a Ponzi scheme. Let's suppose I take in $50m, pocket $10m, and spend the rest on "investment returns" and appearing to run a real business. I live high on the hog for 5 years before it all falls apart, at which point many too-trusting people have lost their lifes' savings. What is the correct penalty?

There's no way a financial penalty can be correct here because all of my money was stolen. If the government just sets me back the zero I started at, what punishment is that? Where's my disincentive to do it all again?

If anything, I'd argue financial crimes are more likely to deserve jail time. People who steal food may be doing it out of necessity. But nobody stealing millions through financial crimes can claim desperation. I don't think people who use suits to rob instead of ski masks are any less thieves.

I’d imagine the penalty at least involves returning any stolen money, but a garnishment on future income and additional IRS scrutiny should do it.

I actually think jail time isn’t enough a disincentive without the financial penalty because otherwise it can just be a cost of doing business.

For example there was a chronic thief in SF that stole peoples’ laptops from cafes. She was jailed multiple times but because the police had no way of knowing where she hid the stolen goods they were still never recovered and presumably she kept her earnings even after jail time.

Oh, yeah, I totally agree that there should be financial penalties larger than the ill-gotten gains. I'm just saying that isn't enough.

There's a legal expression (it's in French originally) that says

"You can't get blood from a stone"

This effectively means financial crimes can never be repaid in full, and frequently only small percentages get repaid. It also means the government can never hope to actually do anything to help other than punishment.

Going after financial crimes to protect victims ... just doesn't work.

Somehow this is enormously at odds with people's expectation of justice, and people either just can't or refuse to believe that's really how it works.

> at which point many too-trusting people have lost their lifes' savings

People should be a little smarter and not fall for Ponzi schemes. Furthermore, many people who invest in such schemes, understand how they work but hope to get profit before it collapses.

So you’re going with victim blaming as your defense here?

> People should be a little smarter and not fall for Ponzi schemes

Blaming the victims is not a solution.

This logic can be applied to justify stopping punishing any crime (“well, they should have stayed at home if they did not want to get mugged”, “they should know better than leave their house for the week if they did not want to get burglarised”, etc).

The victim-perpetrator binary is a false dilemma. Courts recognize contributory negligence in car accidents, why shouldn't they recognize them for self-inflicted financial harms in which one was aware or should have been aware of the risks?

I'm assuming you are actually a troll, or maybe you haven't actually looked beyond the headline. Many "schemes" are very legitimate looking, offering modest returns. At the moment with very low bank deposit even a 10% investment fund is attractive. Also vulnerable often cannot distinguish good will from good acting by purveyors.

Just recently it has come to light that a crooked funeral fund here in Australia has been preying on indigenous people for years with no prospect on their deposits being returned

I don't think you understand how scams work. They're engineered so that somebody will fall for them. If we made everybody 10% smarter, scammers would just make their scams 10% cleverer.

I also think a linear "smartness" model misses it. Both intelligence and knowledge are multidimensional. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses, and well-run scams target particular weaknesses.

Being raped, assaulted or having a family member murdered is worse than losing money.

Money can be repaid. You can't be unraped.

What about death as a result of money stolen from public health?

You write that in a tone of contradiction, but I don't see what in my comment contradicts that.

Rape and murder are extreme crimes and of course no financial loss is equal to them but there are other violent crimes that have less of an impact compared to losing money.

You might be thinking about someone stealing a person's TV but what about their life savings. What about a corporation that goes bankrupt because of financial misdeeds and people lose their jobs? My dad lost his job in the mid 90s and the effects on my family involved massive stress for years.

Financial concerns/economy seems to be the most important issue to voters in almost every election ever.

It's the 5th highest reason for divorce at 36% (https://www.insider.com/why-people-get-divorced-2019-1)

It can also can result in physical issues. Maybe you can't afford healthy food, maybe you can't afford health care due to financial loss.

I couldn't find statistics but I can't imagine that in cases of theft being repaid 100% or even 50% of your loss occurs that frequency (but no source so..)

In other words some financial crimes are worse than violent crimes.

I agree with your conclusion. Google News has correctly decided I'm interested in Ponzi schemes, so it shows me articles at least weekly about newly discovered large ones. A very common element is people retired or on their way who have lost everything. I'd much rather get a punch in the snoot than to spend years slowly dying of stress, poor nutrition, and patchy medical care.

Are those the only crimes that involve jail time you can think of?

We spent half a century sending people to jail for years or decades for possessing a bit of marijuana. You can be sent to jail for non-payment of speeding fines, or fishing at the wrong time of year. Or peacefully protesting government policies.

> Being raped, assaulted or having a family member murdered is worse than losing money

Violent and financial/corruption crimes are in categories to themselves.

The former for obvious reasons. The latter, because they corrode the institutions that make civilization work. Let financial crime--specifically corruption--run rampant and you'll lose more lives to riots, civil war or worse than to murder.

It's no secret that car factories in peacetime make good tanks in war. Also, in peacetime, they employ many voters and their families. Ghosn was an immensely powerful man. He used his influence for personal enrichment. Enrichment his family collaborated to defend. Kings' courtiers had strict punishments for disloyalty for a reason. Much of that was personal. But some tied to the integrity of the state.

We cannot excuse multimillionaires from running from the law while claiming to have a just society just because they had good PR. Ghosn, and his family [1], must be held accountable.

[1] his son, Anthony Ghosn, facilitated the escape [a] as did his daughter, Maya Ghosn, who is profiled in the article

[a] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-ghosn-taylor-bail-...

Well if you're going to go to the extreme, how about treason?

Let's say you sell military secrets to an enemy that results in nuclear destruction of your country and deaths of millions of people. The act of exchanging that secret for money was nothing more than moving some bits around on the internet, certainly non violent itself. Would you retain this strange protection from responsibility for consequences of your action in this case as well?

Money often represents opportunity, sometimes its lack can cause significant distress. Say you want to go on vacation but find that all your bank accounts are in the red, you are not going to make that vacation, instead you are probably going to spend significant amounts of time trying to fix the resulting issues. Someone dropping by years later with a few million in hand isn't going to give you those years of your life back.

> Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty.

Financial crimes, aka crimes rich people commit, to be richer, deserve much more harsh treatment that we give them today. You can go to jail for years for shoplifting (aka crimes poor people commit) few thousand dollars worth of goods. People should be much more often sentenced to go to jail for life for committing millions of dollars worth of financial crimes.

Financial crimes are not violent and therefore should be punished lightly.

How light can a punishment be before it's no longer discouraging the crime?

That makes no sense.

A home burglary where no one's present is non violent. Do you think that should be punished lightly? It causes orders of magnitude less damage than a lot of financial crime.

Burglary carries a presumption of force.

People steal packages off doorsteps all the time. It requires no force.

Not burglary.

You may be confusing burglary with robbery.

> Burglary is a crime under both the common law and the model penal code. Exact definitions of burglary under the common law vary by jurisdiction though they all criminalize some form of illegally entering a building at night with the intent to commit a crime within.

From https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/burglary

Typically this means you've broken into a domicile (sometimes lesser charges of Burglary exist for non-domicile, eg a vacant commercial building). If you break into someone's home, at night, while it's occupied, the law presumes you intended to do violence.

This presumption is usually correct!

> If you break into someone's home, at night, while it's occupied, the law presumes you intended to do violence.

Well yes. But I explicitly said "no one's present". And it usually happens during the day where I live, because that's when people work.

This https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/459/ says that just entering a building with the intent to commit a crime counts as burglary even if no force was required.

Clients of Bearings bank and Nick Leeson would disagree

Why does violence matter when determining a punishment?

Someone stealing my life savings will have a much greater impact than someone punching me in the face.

Weak trolling attempt, and TBH totally wrong forum to troll in the first place.

If you're a rational criminal, you might think along these lines:

* I am considering committing a crime that is worth X to me.

* The price (punishment) for this crime is Y.

* I only have to pay the price if I'm caught and convicted, both of which have some probability between 0 and 1.

So the effective price for committing this crime is Y multiplied by the probability I'm caught and convicted.

    X > P(caught) * P(convicted) * Y

Then I should commit the crime. Otherwise, it's not worth it.

For financial crimes, it's safe to say that P(caught) and P(convicted) get lower and lower the richer and more powerful you become. You have access to the best accountants and attorneys, making certain financial crime reliably profitable and increasingly attractive.

Therefore it stands to reason that while there is a line past which a punishment becomes excessive, an effective punishment must lead would-be criminals to decide that the risk is not worth it. Until this is the case, we have to either increase P(caught & convicted), or else increase Y; we can't do neither.

Probably increasing both is best; an increase in fines (Y) could fund the increased enforcement (P) necessary. Good luck passing those laws, though.

the second term is more clearly written as: P(convicted|caught)

Register theft also occurs so does stealing from the common tipjar. It's not always 10s of millions, often it's thousand per year that people siphon off. It's till financial crimes.

there are plenty of britney griner in california in jail for weed thanks to the same people that now fight for freeing britney griner.

Point me to a single person in California jail for 9 years for possession of under 1 gram of weed. CA legalized weed and then went the extra mile (which many states haven't) to expunge existing convictions and for people being punished currently, downgrading most felony possession counts to misdemeanors and reducing/dismissing the rest of the charges;

https://www.pubdef.ocgov.com/programs/dismissal-and-re-sente...

So if the people Kamala Harris prosecuted got less than 9 years, that's OK?

"only a few dozen people were sent to state prison for marijuana convictions under Harris’ tenure." https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/kamala-harris-prosecu...

Just bottomless wells of bad faith arguments. It's incredible.

We were talking about marijuana prosecutions in the US vs. Russia. How is it "bad faith" to mention prosecutions in San Francisco?

When was the last prosecution in California? Are there any people in jail today for the crime? What was the average sentence of the 6 people per year who went to prison while Harris was DA? What crime were those people convicted of and what quantity of drugs did it involve? Do you think Chesa was inappropriately lenient in choosing not to prosecute crimes? The tack of your supposed argument let’s me know plenty enough that I’m not remotely interesting in continuing this conversation.

You ask five questions and then say you're not interested in continuing this conversation. And then you bring up Chesa, whom no one's mentioned at all. Cute.

"He had essentially zero chance of being acquitted" - So if I commit a crime it's morally acceptable to flee justice if the probability or evidence exceeds a certain threshold? In other words, the more proof there is that I committed a crime gives me more justification to avoid punishment?

"He was the victim of Nissan executives who didn't like having a gaijin be their boss:" Prove it.

"If you disagree with that, suppose Britney Griner somehow escaped from Russian "justice"? How would you feel then?" - They aren't related cases with completely different circumstances and crimes. It also doesn't matter.

To bad Britney Griner doesn't have the $15 million~ that Ghosen needed to escape. https://fortune.com/2020/01/10/carlos-ghosn-net-worth-2020-f...

> "He was the victim of Nissan executives who didn't like having a gaijin be their boss:" Prove it.

Oh, sure. Like underhanded whisper campaigns and unspoken agreements are susceptible to "proof."

> He had essentially zero chance of being acquitted

I think GP was referring to the fact that Japan has an over 99% conviction rate.

Even if we presume that Japan has unusually high quality prosecutors and judges, that rate is so high that I think it’s reasonable to presume a fair number of innocent people are getting convicted (which happens lots of places, of course, but Japan’s conviction rate is still unusual).

There is another factor to it - not trying cases which aren't certain victories as joining that 1% of the conviction rate is an extremely shameful failure. The conviction rate is a "smell" regardless of how you slice it.

"Scholars say the biggest reason for Japan's very high conviction rate is the country's low prosecution rate and the way Japan calculates its conviction rate is different from other countries.[2][3][4] According to them, Japanese prosecutors will prosecute only the very few cases in which they are most likely to be guilty and not many others."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220712033655/https://www.nippo...

I don't think it's reasonable to assume anything happens if there's an alternative explanation.

The 99% rate is NOT because the system (prosecutors, judges) is "good", the rate is so high because system is structured to bully anyone arrested to admit to the crimes. You're basically coerced into confession, whether or not you did it.

There's a simple way to test this:

What percentage of convictions are accompanied by confessions?

I don't know the answer to that, actually.

> Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty

Eyeball related crimes deserve an eyeball-related penalty, car crimes deserve a car penalty, gun crimes deserve a gun penalty.

I mean, really. Did you even try to think of one counter-example to your claim before you wrote it?

> He was the victim of Nissan executives who didn't like having a gaijin be their boss:

Largely agree.

> Financial crimes deserve a financial penalty.

That's a very old aristocratic view of financial "wrong-doing", still persists somewhat these days because the idea that for "people with money" with a good reputation, being condemned in public and losing their good name is already a penalty big enough.

That's... let's just say this line of thinking should stay in the past.

> please explain what, exactly, Ghosn was accused of stealing, and from whom?

Should every company executive be free to steal millions of dollars from their companies [1][2]? Be free to "renovate homes for Ghosn in Rio de Janeiro, Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam" on pensioners' dimes? Get a free pass from investigation by multiple countries [3] because they ran a PR campaign while they were pillaging?

Anyone informed defending Ghosn is essentially rejecting the rule of law, full stop. He's wanted for serious crimes in multiple countries with discordant agendas.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-ghosn-allegations-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Initial_arrest

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-22/france-is...

So you just admitted that all the hypotheticals about victims in poverty and $10 thefts are nonsense. He took millions from Nissan and Renault, neither of whom are exactly widows and orphans.

And they were all quite happy to go along with it, for a long, long time. Did he hold a gun to their heads and make them hire him? And couldn't their Boards just fire him?

> hypotheticals about victims in poverty and $10 thefts are nonsense

Hypotheticals, sure. I’m not familiar with his every crime. Just the big ones.

> Did he hold a gun to their heads and make them hire him? And couldn't their Boards just fire him?

It sounds like the answer to the above questions, for you, is yes. Fraud. Embezzlement. All okay, because the ultimate victims, the shareholders, either didn’t push back better or were further defrauded by a possibly corrupt, possibly incompetent Board. We can’t know either way because the guy up and offed to Beirut, where he sits a fugitive of multiple international arrest warrants.

> a possibly corrupt, possibly incompetent Board

So there we are. The people in charge of controlling him, the people whose job it is to supervise him, didn't.

> people in charge of controlling him, the people whose job it is to supervise him, didn't

Sure. I made an analogy to Enron elsewhere.

But their incompetence, potentially collusion, doesn’t excuse Ghosn. And the path to holding them responsible is through him. The flip side of this, also unexplored, is that people with skeletons in their closets don't tend to hide them alone. Who else is complicit? Who among them was blackmailed, and which decisions were unduly influenced by that?

You can apply that logic towards a variety of other crimes: the principal who doesn't properly supervise the teacher who beats students, the police chief who doesn't properly supervise the officers who form their own drug running gang. There's usually someone else you can blame besides the people who commit the immediate crime; there's always someone if you find creative ways to blame the victims. Most people grow out of thinking this way, though.

It doesn't make you a monster if you just happen to admire a criminal. That's human nature; people have admired all sorts of criminals, especially stylish ones who get away with things. There's a whole film genre about them.

But, like, if we're going to discuss them on a message board, we should probably be clear about the fact that Danny Ocean and his gang deserve to be --- in fact, really kind of need to be --- in prison.

Ignoring all that - if I were in his shoes I’d do the same - guilty or innocent.

I mean, even if I wasn’t in his billionaire shoes I’d do the same - if facing a long imprisonment in a foreign country I’d take chance at escaping any day.

1) not sure this is really relevant. If you don't trust the country's laws you are doing business in dont do business there. Part of the reason I dont plan on opening a factory in Liberia is because i wouldnt trust their legal system to protect me. Im happy working in USA even though their legal system shares suspicious statistics with Japan.

The Feds in USA have a 97% guilty rate, so this same logic could be used basically saying because defendants in federal USA trials have virtually no chance of getting off scott free they can escape and we shouldnt call that injustice.

1) Based on what? The fact that evidence against him was overwhelming(?), or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

"Japan

The conviction rate is 99.3%. By only stating this high conviction rate it is often misunderstood as too high—however, this high conviction rate drops significantly when accounting for the fact that Japanese prosecutors drop roughly half the cases they are given. If measured in the same way, the United States' conviction rate would be 99.8%."

And he has since had to settle a massive fraud charge from the US SEC and is the subject of an arrest warrant from France now too. Bit hard to just dismiss the whole thing as being due to racist authoritarian Japan.

2) What was he a victim of? There are allegations and counter allegations, why should he have the presumption of innocence but not these "Nissan executives"?

> In his shoes, I would feel morally justified in escaping.

I'm guessing most CEO types would feel moral in personally deciding the punishment for their crimes is unfair and therefore they are justified in committing more crimes to get away with their earlier crimes...

> If you disagree with that, suppose Britney Griner somehow escaped from Russian "justice"? How would you feel then?

An emotionally charged question because of the situation now, but there are many who get "unfair" sentences for drugs all over the world including people jailed in Russia for similar crimes, people executed in South East Asia and the Middle East for drugs, and people locked away in the US for years on non violent crimes based on legislation and prosecutions orchestrated by the likes of President Biden and Vice President Harris.

Not that you can't be against all of those things, but it's a pretty huge crutch that seems to be trying to equate Japan's justice system with Russia's, and harsh penalties for personal drug use with the often very lenient punishments for fraud and embezzlement. "If you aren't with Ghosn then you're with Putin" is a bridge too far.

> Edit. Everyone talking about hypothetical burglaries and $10 thefts from poor people: please explain what, exactly, Ghosn was accused of stealing, and from whom?

Some millions of dollars. From company shareholders.

https://archive.ph/DnP1T

The article ends with Ghosn entering the box.

> This article is adapted from “Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn” by Wall Street Journal reporters Nick Kostov and Sean McLain, to be published on Aug. 9, 2022

They left out the interesting part

Not a coincidence! The marketing purpose of publishing a book excerpt is so the book's audience can better see why it's worth buying the book.

It makes you wonder how hard it would be for someone in the US to do the same... Let's imagine a hypothetical situation where a prominent wealthy person was indicted for some random federal crime, say 18 U.S.C. § 372 or 2384, etc. I'd bet they wouldn't need to hide in a box to flee to a country without an extradition agreement, like Russia for example.

One would hope we'd be able to prevent something like that, but it's a big country.

It's good that this case pulled the lid off (sorry) Japan's questionable justice system. See also: child abduction in mixed marriages https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/their-children-were-taken-...

Doesn't the lid get pulled off every couple years and then nothing? I feel I read about a few cases over the decades. Somehow Nintendo and Anime seem to overpower that quite well. ;-)

Yeah my brother had a child with his Japanese wife last year, and she became very unwell mentally post-partum, but won't seek treatment. He's desperately unhappy, but he has to stay in the marriage, as he has no chance in hell of seeing his son if he leaves, foreign spouses never win a custody dispute in Japanese courts, and Japan does not do shared custody.

I think something similar happened go some youtuber (google Tech lead guy on youtube) where his wife who is Japanese took their (I think American) child to Japan and now he cannot even see his child.

One can only wonder what led her to do this to him (as a millionaire).

I remember the dude and remembered him mentioning trouble with his wife and kid.

How can a parent take a kid out of the country without the consent of the other parent without it being categorized as kidnapping. Being that the kid is an American citizen can't the U.S. system get Japan to send this kid back(if the mother is only Japanese and not the kid). Didn't America extradite the Americans involved in Ghosen's escape? So they should have agreements this such legal matters to no?

P.s. I really didn't agree with American extraditing it's citizen in Goshen's case.

This is indeed a big issue with international marriages. The solution I thought of (because I was living in Japan for few years, so may someday get stuck in a similar situation) would be to steal the kid before she does, like using holidays abroad, or even just like taking a fly with the kid after school or something. Basically boils down to firing first. Risky if the spouse find it, and of course that mean leaving a lot of things (possibly financial assets) behind.

That's the problem, he's not that kind of guy. And no-one really thinks about these things, e.g., "what if my partner develops post-partum psychosis in a jurisdiction hostile to people not from that jurisdiction" when falling in love.

In a closely similar situation, I went for counseling personally. It helped me understand where she's coming from and stick it out. You can never judge other people, but marriages have their lows and it's worth fighting for them -- at least more often than pop culture and individualist mores ("get out, it's getting you down") would have you believe.

And I mean, you will have your cross to bear eventually. That's life.

He's in counselling, but to handle being the subject of her rages and paranoia. Post-partum psychosis isn't really something you can understand their viewpoint on.

She really needs professional assistance but won't seek it, and her family have been slow to move her towards doing so, as her Dad is a prominent religious official in their small town, and there's some shame in having an unwell daughter.

But, recently they've acknowledged that there is something that needs treatment and have been gradually approaching it, which gives my brother hope. He loves her, of course, but there's marriages worth fighting for, and marriages where you're being abused. Currently, his is the latter.

So... not super similar ;)

Wow, not hard to see how the next 9/11 will happen. The staff at the charter jet terminal were almost criminally clueless.

"So, how exactly does the security work around here, anyway? Is this huge crate going to be X-rayed? Because it needs to not be X-rayed. Also, here's a $10,000 tip, just to make sure you, um, don't remember us."

I'm not sure how much this is a 9/11 risk?

As far as I know the protection against "taking a jet and crashing it into a building" is a squadron of fighter jets that are quickly dispatched to (if necessary) shoot down any plane on a risky path. That's exactly what happened when some mentally unstable airport employee "stole" a plane and committed suicide by crashing it into the water after a few stunts.

The other risk would be to take passengers hostage, but in case of a chartered plane I think it's fair game to let the customer themselves decide on the level of security they need - presumably they aren't harboring any terrorists/hijackers, and I would think hijacking a private corporate flight is really low on terrorist groups' bucket lists in terms of the expected "payoff".

You're not wrong, but still, the events recounted in this article provide a near-perfect template for some really horrific shenanigans.

> As far as I know the protection against "taking a jet and crashing it into a building" is a squadron of fighter jets that are quickly dispatched to (if necessary) shoot down any plane on a risky path.

It's 16 miles from JFK airport to Manhattan. A jet plane can fly this distance in less than 5 minutes at sea level, within a normal flight envelope.

There's latency recognizing from the ground that an airliner needs to be intercepted, launching alert fighters, and getting authorization to shoot down.

Trust is involved in allowing a big container to be loaded on a plane.

Laws, including custom checks, passport checks, etc. are for regular people. There was even a recent program on NPR how different is the life of super-wealthy.

And while super-wealthy is a totally different game, even upper middle class money already distort the reality in a much more comfortable way. I'm watching a case in Santa Clara of an NVIDIA director, a Russian immigrant, who 2 years ago being drunk and speeding on I-80 hit several cars and killed a woman (all that "allegedly" as the moron does evidently have money for lawyers). It happened about the same time as a famous actor in Russia driving drunk killed a man in an accident, and that sparked my curiosity to compare how the cases would go. The Russian actor, a relatively decent human being, chose a path of a regular person and instead of applying all his star power/etc. he is already almost 2 years into his 7 years prison term. The NVIDIA director on the other hand totally lawyered up, and there have since then been uncountable motions/hearings/etc. with no sign of progress. My guess is that he will have that charade going for a long as possible - given the money he makes, the lawyers is just a minor cost of doing business for him - and if/when things start to come to an outcome he doesn't like, he would just leave the country, doesn't even need a box like Ghosn, and go back to Russia or anywhere else where no extradition treaties with US (his bail is just $275K, pretty laughable given the NVIDIA director comp).

> My guess is that he will have that charade going for a long as possible.

I don’t know about the this. Money and fame didn’t save Phil Spector and it won’t save him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spector

> Laws, including custom checks, passport checks, etc. are for regular people. There was even a recent program on NPR how different is the life of super-wealthy.

Customs checks hardly affect regular people. Security checks are an optional service you can pay for, but probably won’t bother if it’s your own plane and isn’t full of hundreds of random people. Rich people still have passport checks, they just pay the government to send the passport control people to their private terminal (which is no different than how regular privately owned commercial airports work)

It’s all exactly the same, except as a rich person you’re far more likely to be picked for a customs check.

> The NVIDIA director on the other hand totally lawyered up, and there have since then been uncountable motions/hearings/etc. with no sign of progress.

due process bad!

What kind of due process you get depends on your money, and that is bad. In particular people rot in jail for months and years on much smaller bails until they just take the plea deal.

And about passport checks I repeated the NPR as I have no first hand experience with private jet :)

Problem isn’t that rich people have it better, the problem is that poor people have it much worse.

If rich people had it like poor then the situation would have improved overnight.

We should have "public service" for lawyers. Every defence attorney needs to 2 months of every year defending poor people.

Well there is a reason why people try so hard to get rich! If it didn't give you privileges nobody would bother. As a child I will always remember OJ Simpson and his TEAM of lawyers.

For some reason our society needs to believe in "justice is blind" lmao.

> There was even a recent program on NPR how different is the life of super-wealthy.

Link?

It’s possible that the operatives knew something about Japanese customs and etiquette and the $10,000 tip was intended to distract the employees at the airport.

If they are worried about navigating a delicate social situation - rejecting the money without offense / loss of face - then they aren’t thinking about the boxes or the flimsy cover story.

The article said that this scenario - rejecting tips from uninformed foreigners - was not uncommon; but that the amount involved and what that amount implied about the potential of a future business relationship made the situation more delicate.

I think this was very likely the case. It has the feel of a magic trick —- intentionally drawing your attention to one particular point so you don’t see what they don’t want you to.

Could be. However, the risk is that if I were already the slightest bit suspicious, even subconsciously, I would go full red alert when that envelope of cash came out.

I'd (like to think I'd) bow discreetly, slip the envelope into my pocket, and excuse myself. Then I'd be on the phone to security before my office door swung closed.

lol, what’s the concern? Someone will blow up their private jet with 5 people on board? boo-hoo.

There are no hardened (or any) cockpit doors on PJs, you eat with metal cutlery and often serve yourself drinks from large glass bottles.

Want to fly a plane into a building? Anyone can get a pilots license, there are no background checks. You can just rent a plane and pull off “the next 9/11”, no amount of terminal security can solve this.

What exactly is your concern? What would better security at a private jet terminal prevent?

It’s super unusual that there were any pre-departure controls at all. I’ve never had my stuff checked while flying private, except occasionally by customs, at arrival.

> Want to fly a plane into a building? Anyone can get a pilots license, there are no background checks. You can just rent a plane and pull off “the next 9/11”, no amount of terminal security can solve this.

Yes, those are concerns.

How are “The staff at the charter jet terminal” supposed to address this? Those are the people GP called “criminally clueless”, suggesting that the lack of pre-departure controls for private jets will cause the next 9/11.

Fire the criminally clueless and replace their setup with the security that’s setup for every other airport terminal.

And if you need a background check for a HAM radio license, it makes sense to have a background check for pilot licenses.

> Fire the criminally clueless and replace their setup with the security that’s setup for every other airport terminal.

What will that achieve? How many terror attacks have there been on board private planes?

> And if you need a background check for a HAM radio license, it makes sense to have a background check for pilot licenses.

An useful background check would be something more akin to a security clearance, not like a HAM radio license.

1. How many successful terror attacks have happened with any plane currently flying? Zero. How many terror attacks have I committed? Zero.

Why do we still check those? Whatever checking private planes would achieve.

Maybe that's nothing, but annoying safety/security measures need to be all or nothing. No exemptions.

2. You didn't understand re: HAM radio, you have to report your felonies for a HAM radio license and that gets reviewed, in USA anyway: http://www.arrl.org/fcc-qualification-question

> Why do we still check those? Whatever checking private planes would achieve.

Regular passenger flights often contain hundreds of random people, private jets don’t. It’s downright idiotic to equate these.

> 2. You didn't understand re: HAM radio, you have to report your felonies for a HAM radio license and that gets reviewed, in USA anyway

I did understand.

I'm not saying that private charter flights should get the whole TSA treatment. They certainly shouldn't.

I'm just saying, when you run into some people who claim to be classical musicians but who don't look or behave anything like any musicians you've ever heard of, who are travelling on an unusual schedule with unusual luggage, who ask a lot of oddly-specific questions about security, who seem overly concerned with whether or not a large crate will get X-rayed, and who offer you large quantities of cash for unclear reasons, it's worth at least a quick ping to airport security.

> it's worth at least a quick ping to airport security.

“airport security” generally doesn’t show up for free, it’s a paid service.

Interesting, I didn't know that. Seems weird to discourage people from flagging suspicious activity. "See something, say something" doesn't mean you have to go full Stasi, just keep your eyes open and use some common sense.

Watch Carlos Ghosn: Last flight. I watched it on emirates airlines. And it was good.

I was in Japan in early 2019, just around the time he released a statement that was aired on TV. I have to say, Ghosn is very charming; he makes you want to believe every word he says.

Can someone ELI5 what exactly he apparently did wrong?

It's confusing, I hear people say he "escaped" and I hear people say he should be prosecuted for escaping. Weird.

> Can someone ELI5 what exactly he apparently did wrong?

Basically Enron except he stole the money [1]. (Also, less of it.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Initial_arrest

I'm not familiar with Enron, but he just simply stole money into his personal accounts?

> he just simply stole money into his personal accounts?

Yup! (I mean, it went to subsidiaries for pay his family and his own entities. Or was laundered to pay for a party at Versailles. Fairly standard stuff.)

How good is he as a manager? Would Nissan be a better company if they had kept him at the top?

He worked his way from the bottom and climbed up as an immigrant. As a company man he seems legitimate.

he was a genius in automotive management, turned around south american division of michelin in less than 2 years. saved Nissan from bankrupcy in few years by cost cutting everything that wasnt extremely necessary, throwed away alls "zaibatsu culture things" and promoted by skill not "age". he really went against japanese corporate norms.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Career

Props to Ghosn. Stuck it to the man.

Ghosn IS "the man". People who stick it to the man don't have access to Green Berets and private jets and multiple citizenships.

This story can be understood as bickering between two factions or groups of "the man": on the one side the Japanese legal system, hardly a champion of the underdog; and on the other, one of the world's richest and most powerful people, the sort of person who does not (cannot) arrive at his station in life without being a special type of ruthless sociopath, whether they're guilty of literal crimes or not along the way.

So like it's a highly entertaining cage match, but rooting for one or the other if you're not also part of the ownership class is kinda a coin toss.

The other side, according to Ghosn, wasn't the Japanese legal system -- it was other Nissan executives that weaponized the Japanese legal system against a foreigner. Still, I agree it's very much a case of infighting among the privileged.

I'd add that the Japanese political system was involved as well. It wasn't hard for the Nissan power players to align political support since there was already national pride and home-team loyalty at stake. The deck was definitely heavily stacked against Ghosn.

>>one of the world's richest and most powerful people, the sort of person who does not (cannot) arrive at his station in life without being a special type of ruthless sociopath

Many people who become extraordinarily successful owe their success to their integrity and competence, not to ruthlessness or sociopathy.

This is especially true in advanced economies which became advanced largely because of somewhat meritocatic hierarchies that do a decent job of incentivizing and rewarding socially beneficial behavior.

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