Ghosn speaks out following much drama

MANILA: Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO of Renault and Nissan, has been making it to the headlines from quite some time now. The former CEO was charged with underreporting of his income, abusing company funds, and much more. He was then arrested on the 18th of November 2018, which was the beginning of long captivity and interrogation.

Now, the story has taken some sharp turns as the former CEO recently held a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon and put forward his defence arguments regarding the charges that he is facing. He was put in an "inhumane system of hostage justice" and that the "allegations are untrue and I should never have been arrested in the first place", said Ghosn. Besides, the fact that Japan has a 99.4% conviction rate further brought his hopes down that he will be part of a fair trial.

Ghosn stated that he was kept in 24-hour lit custody for as long as 130 days. Moreover, there were days when he would be interrogated for as many as 8 hours, and that too without a lawyer. The detainers would only allow the former CEO to step out of the custody for not more than 30 minutes every weekday. Ghosn wanted to link Nissan with Renault more closely, and that instilled fear among the folks at Nissan that the two companies might end up merged. The former CEO wanted a single board for both the companies while Nissan having more autonomy and both the automakers having separate headquarters and executives.

"Some of my Japanese friends thought that the only way to get rid of the influence of Renault on Nissan, was to get rid of me", said Ghosn. While the former CEO has alleged that the conspiracy battalion involved Nissan executives and the Japanese government, he, however, believes that it did not involve Japan's Prime Minister Abe. The 65-year-old alleges that his character has been slaughtered and the world now sees him as a "cold, greedy dictator" instead of a "role model".

Speaking of his escape from Japan, Ghosn felt that he would either get out of Japan or die over there. He "felt like the hostage of a country I served for 17 years", said the former CEO. While journalists tried hard to get the escape story out of Ghosn's mind, he did not offer much. According to the reports flowing now, the 65-year-old reportedly left his house for attending two former US military personnel, then riding a bullet train to Osaka, and then finally hiding in a large box made for audio equipment for bypassing the security and boarding a private jet that took him to Turkey and then, at last, Lebanon.

The press conference also saw Ghosn expressing regret at not accepting the offer of becoming General Motors' CEO that was offered to him by Steve Ratner in 2009. He stated to have rejected the offer with a double pay just because of his loyalty towards Nissan. He also feels like he should have gone ahead as per the planning and should have retired from Renault and Nissan in 2018 itself.

Ghosn also reported that he was in words with FCA chairman John Elkann regarding an alliance with Fiat Chrysler (FCA). The plan, however, could not materialise since he was soon arrested. FCA then went ahead to merge with Renault but that deal could not transpire either. Following the same, FCA went into a merger with the PSA Group, and Ghosn was surprised that Renault would "miss that opportunity to become the dominant player in the industry".

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