Now Ghosn’s wife has a warrant out for her arrest for perjury. I’m beginning to think the Japanese did that out of spite or to save face. Carlos Ghosn: Japan issues arrest warrant for Carole Ghosn, former Nissan chief's wife - CNN
Oh this whole thing is definitely trumped up. What's interesting is that it's not freaking out the international business community as much as I'd have thought. Japan is a "friendly" country, but it's obvious they're sending a message. Nissan was gonna get taken over by Renault and Japan Inc. wasn't having it. (Shame our country doesn't care as much about our native industries) You would think this would have a chilling effect on businesses doing business in Japan. Gonna be interesting watching this unfold.
Turns out Ghosn was smuggled out in a big music instrument case. It did not get x-rayed (probably too big), but somehow wasn't checked by customs.
Update: Looks like Ghosn may have right about being set up. And there are emails that substantiate it! Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
When a government lets a city burn, but sends a SWAT team to an old man's house for white collar crime, you can #### well bet it's politically motivated.
I have mixed feelings. Ghosn sold a huge chunk of Nissan to Renault and the quality of their products suffered under his leadership. Nissan went from being the premier Japanese sports car manufacturer to the name you go to when you have bad credit.
Well yeah, exactly. Except that instead of removing him through the board room they trumped up some charges. There's something of a bit of nationalism at work here as well. Ghosn was about to put the company further under the thumb of European quasi-national conglomerates (remember, the French government has a 15% voting share.) and Nissan wanted no part of it. I'm sure other JDM (Japanese Domestic Manufacturers) also backed the move. (The highest echelon of Japanese businesses are rather chummy, they all play at the same golf course, so to speak.) they wanted to make a statement, Japan Inc. is not for sale. And while I sorta agree with the sentiment, this is really a shot fired round the world in international business. Or would be if it wasn't for all the other news crowding the headlines. I'm kinda curious to see how this plays out. (BTW, I don't really think the Japanese really care about Ghosn, it's much more about foreign takeover of their #3 automaker.)
Nissan was in bad shape before it got to that point. Everything started going downhill when most of the vehicle lineup started using those POS Jatco CVTs in place of more traditional automatic transmissions. And then most of the vehicles had their production shifted to Mexico or here in the U.S. to get around the chicken tax.
A former Green Beret, with one of his specialties "hostage extraction", was paid a few million dollars to smuggle Goshen out of Japan. Now, Japan is trying to extradite him from America. Hopefully, America will tell Japan to "shove it."
That small airport was checked out by the former Green Beret and he measured the X-ray machine, then designed a box that was too large to go thru it.
