Tokyo (AFP)
On the morning of December 31, 2019, Japan was amazed to discover the flight to Lebanon of its most famous defendant, the former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, a fiasco whose repercussions continue to haunt the country a year later.
Two days earlier, while he was on bail in Japan before his trial for alleged financial embezzlement at Nissan, the Franco-Lebanese-Brazilian was quietly leaving Tokyo to reach Osaka (west of the country) by train with two accomplices.
Arrived in Beirut on December 30 after a connection in Istanbul, he is suspected of having escaped controls at Osaka airport by being hidden in a box of audio equipment.
The Japanese authorities, as sounded, will take several days to react officially.
Their extradition request was quickly rejected, as Beirut did not have an agreement to this effect with Tokyo.
Targeted by a request for arrest via Interpol, Mr. Ghosn has however been stranded in Lebanon since then.
"I have not fled justice, I escaped injustice" he hammered in early January during a conference-show in Beirut in front of cameras around the world.
But this spectacular rebound did not put an end to the "Ghosn affair" in Japan, or abroad where it has many ramifications.
- Cornered prosecutors -
A criminal trial opened in mid-September in Tokyo to try the former Nissan legal officer, the American Greg Kelly, arrested in Japan on the same day as Mr. Ghosn in November 2018 and who, like him, claims his innocence.
Mr Kelly is accused of unlawfully and knowingly failing to mention in Nissan stock reports compensation equivalent to € 73 million which Mr Ghosn was subsequently supposed to receive.
He faces up to ten years in prison.
An acquittal of Mr. Kelly would be a "terrible humiliation" for Japanese prosecutors and would also "triumph" Mr. Ghosn, said Stephen Givens, a Tokyo-based business lawyer, in an article published in October on the Nikkei Asia site. .
"Prosecutors have put themselves in a no-win situation. Don't wait for a happy ending," he added.
Another trial began in July in Istanbul to try seven members of the Turkish company that owns the private jet hired for Mr. Ghosn's exfiltration.
And in the United States, two alleged accomplices in his escape, former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his son Peter, were arrested in May with a view to being extradited to Japan.
But they filed a new appeal against their extradition in November, following an advisory opinion from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which concluded that the process of arrest and detention in Japan of Mr. Ghosn was fundamentally unfair.
- Reforms under consideration -
Tokyo deemed "totally unacceptable" the opinion of this group of independent experts.
The Japanese Ministry of Justice has nevertheless launched this year a reflection on possible reforms of the Japanese judicial system, qualified as "hostage justice" by its detractors, an expression which has spread worldwide since the Ghosn affair.
This system is characterized in particular by the length of its police custody: up to 23 days for a single reason for arrest.
Interrogations during this phase also take place without a lawyer.
These conditions make suspects "extremely vulnerable" and encourage them to confess, recently lamented Megumi Wada, a former member of Carlos Ghosn's defense team in Japan and a researcher at the Japanese Bar Association (JFBA).
A vast reform seems unrealistic, however.
Even the JFBA, hardly listened to by the government and carefully avoiding mentioning the Ghosn case, essentially confines itself to demanding respect for rights enshrined in the Japanese constitution.
Another internal debate concerns a possible hardening of the country's bail system.
The use of the electronic bracelet, which does not currently exist in Japan, is in particular being studied.
Nissan also continues to sue its former boss, claiming some 80 million euros in damages in a civil lawsuit in Japan.
Mr. Ghosn himself is asking Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors for millions of euros in compensation through proceedings in the Netherlands, and has entered into a similar dispute with Renault.
He is also concerned by several legal investigations in France, relating in particular to suspicions of misuse of corporate assets at Renault and the Dutch subsidiary of Renault-Nissan, RNBV.
© 2020 AFP