TOKYO, March 5, 2019—Carlos Ghosn, the former chairman/CEO of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance, March 5 was released from the Tokyo detention center on one billion yen bail ($9 million), yet his case and the fate of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance are likely to drag on for long.
The Tokyo district court upheld the the release request filed by his defense team led by his new lawyer Junichiro Hironaka, who filed it on March 4. The Tokyo Regional Public Prosecutors Office released Ghosn on three conditions – Ghosn cannot live in a location other than one designated by the office, cannot leave Japan, and that he be under surveillance so as not to tamper with evidence and flee from the residential location.
The defense team of the law offices of Hironaka, Hiroshi Kawatsu, and Takashi Takano on Feb. 28 filed a request with the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office to release Ghosn who has been detained at the facility since his arrest in November 19, 2018, Hironaka said, and described the case as ‘peculiar’ in that that Ghosn’s alleged most transactions took place more than 10 years ago – and that Nissan executives had been aware of the transactions.
Ghosn was charged for violating the Securities and Exchange Law and later theFinancial Products Transaction Law.. Ghosn allegedly instructed Nissan Motor staff to file false information in the company’s securities reports for the purpose of underreporting his annual income; had the company to foot securities swap transaction losses he incurred in his personal investments; and transferr Nissan money to a Saudi Arabian dealer in violation of the Corporate Law.
‘For what purpose did Nissan reported (whistle-blew) this case to the prosecutors? This is a very peculiar case,’ the lawyer said. ‘Common sense tells me that his case does not warrant to be treated as a criminal case.’
Hironaka said his defense team applied for Ghosn’s bail by proposing that Ghosn be monitored by surveillance cameras and cannot contact with outside people so that he cannot tamper with evidence. The prosecutors were against Ghosn’s release, he said. It was the third time since his arrest that bail application was filed.
Hironaka said the Ghosn case would take a long time and be cumbersome, and it would have significance both ‘historically and societally.’ The defense team, he said, is taking stock of Nissan as a company and ‘the link between Nissan and the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry.’
Hironaka said detention period used to be much shorter in the past but over years, it has been stretched to hundreds of days amounting to ‘hostage justice,’ in contract to other countries’ trends of short detention. He said detention periods are being extended because the prosecutors are not confident enough about evidence they have.
As Hironaka said, one reason why detention period has become so long as to draw overseas eyebrows is the problems inside the Japanese bureaucracy, including the public prosecutors office. During more than six years of the Shinzo Abe government, the Japanese bureaucracy has become far more invasive than before. Among those that stand out are the public prosecutors office, police, and the National Tax Agency. Economic and financial bureaucracies cooperate and collude with them.
Nippon Keidanren, the congregation of aged CEOs who tremble at seeing Japanese industry encroached by foreign and young Japanese dotcom entrepreneurs, side with Abe and the bureaucracy that tout new nationalism centering around Abe’s beautiful Japan, or recovery Japan,’ and with it plot Constitution amendments to give legitimacy to the Self-Defense Force.
Therefore, the search and arrest troika of the prosecutors, police, and taxmen are motivated for more aggressive probe of what they view as unfair. Hirofumi Horie, who founded the Livedoor IoT company raking in hundreds of billions of yen in the 1990s and arrested and detained before released on 600 million yen bail, warned about the prolific prosecutor swoops in a web television program in December, saying the Ghosn arrest was ‘100 percent’ for the prosecutors’ interest to preserve their (waning) authority.’
The lead figure at the prosecutors office is Hiroshi Morimoto, chief investigator of the Tokyo Regional Public Prosecutors Office.
On Sept. 11, 2017, Morimoto told reporters at his first news conference as the head investigator that he would focus on cases viewed by the public as ‘submerged under water and looking unfair.’
Morimoto also said he wants to use the plea bargaining system, which was introduced in Japan in June 2018, and that he would zero in on bribery and corporate crime cases, Japan’s national broadcasting station, NHK, reported at the time.
Morimoto worked as the honcho of the prosecutors’ investigations of the Olympus camera company’s loss fabrication case in 2013. He detained Nobumasa Yokoo, a consulting company CEO that advised Olympus for close to 1,000 days, and other alleged defendants for months. Yokoo and other persons initially charged and detained later presented evidence of their innocence to the Tokyo district court but the presiding judge, Masaharu Ashizawa, refuse to hear them and instead upheld the prosecutors’ demand for guilty verdict even though the charges were for minor violations in 2017. Yokoo and other defendants appealed the case to the Supreme court eventually but the highest court refused to hear, underscoring the collusive nature of court and prosecutors.
Morimoto is known to be the very person who advocated the plea bargaining system to Japan. Morimoto, who is known to be aspiring to become the prosecutor general, apparently has jumped on Nissan’s whistle-blowing on Ghosn for high scores to make up for other recent ditched cases, including the dango tea-partying case of the world’s first linear train track construction involving large Japanese general contractors. He cannot fail on the Ghosn case for his promotion, and also because the trade and industry ministry and Keidanren geezer CEOs want to make sure that Nissan remains headquartered in Japan and much of its production.
Toshio Aritake