Paris (AFP)
The former boss of Renault Carlos Ghosn, who fled Japan where he is being prosecuted for embezzlement, seized in summary proceedings the industrial tribunal to claim the payment of his retirement indemnity, according to concordant sources confirming information on Monday Figaro.
"There is a procedure with the industrial tribunal" in Boulogne-Billancourt, headquarters of the group, confirmed to AFP a source in his entourage. A spokesman for Renault confirmed that the automaker "received a summons to the industrial tribunal at the end of December".
A hearing is scheduled "end of February", said the two parties without revealing the precise date.
The dispute concerns the payment of a retirement indemnity of 249,999.99 euros. This sum was not paid to him by Renault on the grounds that Carlos Ghosn would have resigned from the company at the end of January 2019, while he was still in prison in Japan.
But the former boss, currently in Lebanon, claims to have left the company, without resigning, in order to assert his retirement rights, when he was in fact prevented from leading the group.
"Given in particular his arrest in Japan in November 2018", Carlos Ghosn, was forced, on January 23, 2019, to inform Renault of his decision to permanently leave the company, in order to retire, "says his defense.
In spring 2019, he also took steps to liquidate his rights. "He has benefited from the payment of this pension since June 1, 2019, both under the basic plan and the Agirc - Arrco plan," it was said from the same source. "However, despite (...) his repeated requests to (Renault), his retirement indemnity has still not been paid to him, more than 10 months after" his departure.
"I have rights vis-à-vis Nissan, vis-à-vis Renault, which have not been respected, and I intend to claim them in court," warned Carlos Ghosn last Wednesday.
In his entourage, it is specified that another procedure, this time with the commercial court, is envisaged to obtain his "retirement hat" of a gross amount of 774,774 euros per year, as well as 380,000 performance shares.
These shares, allocated from 2015 to 2018 under the condition of presence in the company four years later, are valued at around 15.5 million euros at the current Renault share price.
© 2020 AFP