"What would we say the Minister of Economy and Finance if he was defending a defendant?", Launched Bruno Le Maire on the set of BFM TV in response to a question on a Mr Ghosn's abandonment by France. The French minister refuses any "interference" in the case of Carlos Ghosn in Japan.
He has "absolutely not" been let go, the minister said. "We have done all that is necessary for Carlos Ghosn to have consular protection, for his presumption of innocence to be defended. "On the other hand, to interfere in a matter of justice which belongs to a sovereign state and a friendly state which is Japan, it is not my role (...) To cross the limit which would be of the interference, I will not do it, "he also said.
"No regrets"
A little more than twenty parliamentarians, mostly right and center, including the new president of the party Republicans Christian Jacob, asked "the French state to do everything possible to ensure that Carlos Ghosn is repatriated to France for to be judged in a fair trial ", in a tribune published in the Journal du Dimanche.
For Mr. Mayor, "it amounts to saying that the justice in Japan would not be fair.This is called interference". He felt that he and the French government had made "all the choices that were respectful of the presumption of innocence of Carlos Ghosn and the Japanese justice". And he has "no regrets" about the decisions made.
"An economic war"
In their gallery, the parliamentarians denounce "the length and the brutality" of the detention of Carlos Ghosn, doubled of a "judicial relentlessness evident in a country where the confession is at the heart of the penal system and 99,4% of the accused are condemned. " They say that "since the beginning of the case, the international human rights treaties that Japan, a G7 member country has ratified, have been repeatedly violated". In their eyes, "what is played is above all the episode of an economic war" to "get rid of the French tutelage of Nissan".
Carlos Ghosn was arrested on November 19, 2018 and spent some 130 days in detention in Tokyo, accused of aggravated breach of trust and misrepresentation to the authorities during his tenure at Nissan. Then sent back to prison for three weeks, he was released on bail on April 25 and has since been subjected to a very strict judicial control in Japan.