The former Nissan boss faced years behind bars, but escaped to Beirut stowed away in a box on a private jet. In an exclusive interview, he tells John Arlidge why he fled.
Global tycoons are rarely strangers to risk, but no chief executive has made a bet as epic as the one Carlos Ghosn made last December.
The former boss of the Renault-Nissan alliance did something he knew would mean he would either live the rest of his life as a free man or die in prison.
Despite being under house arrest on financial misconduct charges involving nearly £80 million (NZ$154.2m), he fled Japan, a stowaway on a midnight private jet.
"It was a huge risk," he says with surprising dispassion.
It's 9.30am in central Beirut and the world's most famous fugitive is talking to me as he crosses Abdel Wahab el-Inglizi St and walks into the Hotel Albergo with his wife, Carole.
It's one of the few hotels in the city that's still open after the vast explosion in the port in August. Ghosn's nearby home was damaged in the blast, but, to him, the battered city is paradise. "I can be with my wife, my kids, who I thought I might never see again," he says, smiling.
Ghosn, who transformed Nissan from a struggling rival of Toyota and Honda to a world-beater that built the UK's largest car plant in Sunderland, was arrested in November 2018 and charged with under-reporting tens of millions of pounds in earnings.
He denies the charges. He was held in solitary confinement in a freezing cell in Tokyo for 130 days and then under house arrest. But last December the 66-year-old escaped on a private jet to Istanbul and then another to Beirut. It was both the business story and the crime story of the decade.
Safely back home — Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with Japan — he is ready to tell his side of the story.
"I'm fighting for my reputation," he says, his eyes suddenly as bright as his cornflower blue shirt.
He has written a book, The Time for the Truth, in which he accuses Nissan of fabricating the charges against him. He claims the company wanted to oust him to prevent him from giving Renault greater power in the alliance, a move that would have been too great a blow to Japanese corporate and national pride, he says.
We'll get to that, but let's cut to the chase. How did he pull off an escape act that makes Houdini look like an amateur?
The escape plan
Ghosn reveals that, contrary to reports, he himself did not spend months planning his midnight run. He knew associates were plotting to spirit him away, but he did not know the details.
He decided to risk it all only last December, after judges refused his requests to see Carole and also ruled that his trial would be split into two parts, which meant it would last at least five years. Facing up to 15 years in prison if convicted, "I had to make a choice: live a miserable life of injustice — or take a chance?"
To have any chance of success, the escape "had to be quick and confidential … I restricted my exchanges to the strict minimum."
Exchanges? How could he communicate with the escape team when he had no computer and his phone was tapped? Ghosn confirms he had obtained an untraceable "burner" mobile phone of the kind used by spies and drug dealers.
How did he get it? He won't say, but a source close to the operation explains: "If you pay the right amount, you can get anything you want in the Japanese market."
Then the man who speaks four languages at a usual million miles an hour clams up completely. "We're not going to talk about the details."
The fallout
There's a good reason. While the plot worked out spectacularly well for him, it has proved disastrous for his accomplices, Michael Taylor, 60, and his son, Peter 27, from Massachusetts.
Taylor Sr is a former US Green Beret whose speciality is exfiltration — bringing home people caught in a jam overseas. (Think Ben Affleck in Argo.)
The pair were arrested by US authorities in May at the request of the Japanese government, which is seeking their extradition. They face four years in jail if convicted in Tokyo of aiding and abetting a fugitive.
Most of the details of the escape have, however, emerged through Beirut sources contacted by The Sunday Times, lawyers and an interview Michael Taylor gave to Vanity Fair before he knew the Japanese were closing in on him and his son.
As the first person to have run two Fortune 500 companies at once, Ghosn is as well connected as any man on the planet.
'Bring our brother home'
As soon as details of his harsh treatment during his time in Japan's Kosuge prison emerged, Beirut sources say the business leaders and backroom fixers who grease the wheels of corporate and political life in the Middle East, where more deals are done under the table than over it, began plotting to, as one put it, "bring our brother home".
A Lebanese businessman, who remains unidentified, contacted Taylor, whom he had met in Iraq when he had been scoping out investment opportunities after the fall of Saddam Hussein and Taylor had been providing security services.
He asked if Taylor could "help a friend in Tokyo". It did not take Taylor long to figure out what the businessman meant and even less time to realise it would be the toughest job he had ever undertaken.
Ghosn was now under house arrest in the city, but his home was monitored by CCTV cameras and plain-clothes detectives followed him everywhere.
Flying was the only option — the nearest western country without an extradition treaty with Japan was more than 2500 miles (4023km) away. But Ghosn's name could not appear on the passenger list and no one could see him board. One of the most recognised men in Japan had to be invisible.
Beirut sources say Taylor began studying the layout and security arrangements of every private airport terminal within 300 miles of Tokyo. Osaka's Kansai airport, it turned out, did not have x-ray equipment big enough to scan large cargo boxes.
Taylor reckoned a box of the kind musicians use to transport heavy stage speakers would be perfect to conceal Ghosn, who is small but weighs 75kg. (He likes his food.)
Black box
Taylor told Vanity Fair he asked a staging company in Beirut to build a black box that would be too big for Osaka's scanners but small enough to pass through the cargo door of a private jet. Breathing holes were drilled in the bottom — to disguise them — and strong, quick rolling casters added. When you're on the run, speed matters.
Next, Taylor needed an aircraft operator who would look the other way on the Istanbul to Beirut flight, which Ghosn would have to board normally. The private air terminal at Istanbul's Ataturk airport does scan cargo of all sizes.
He asked hundreds of charter companies whether they could handle a "principal" who required "a high level of discretion" — code for a "dark" flight.
He had all but given up when Beirut sources say he made one last call to a Turkey-based operator called MNG. An employee said it could help. MNG would later say it had been duped into carrying Ghosn by a rogue staff member.
Taylor had a plane, an airport and a hiding place, but still no idea how to get his famous stowaway to Osaka. He got lucky.
Through Tokyo sources he discovered that, inexplicably, the CCTV footage from Ghosn's home was not monitored live but examined a few days later. It was all the time he needed to spirit him away, but could it be true? Could they also shake off the plain-clothes goons? It was a risk worth taking.
Go time
At midnight on Friday, December 27, Ghosn was in bed at home when his burner phone rang. "I'll see you tomorrow," Taylor said and named the rendezvous point and time, then hung up.
Another photo obtained by The Wall Street Journal shows the box that former auto executive Carlos Ghosn used in his escape from Japan https://t.co/N1swSM2pjO
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 6, 2020
Taylor flew into Osaka overnight on a Bombardier Global Express private jet from Dubai. He was with another man, a Lebanese "fixer" who told the pilots to refuel on landing, then be ready to leave for anywhere within the jet's 7000-mile range at one hour's notice.
When the cargo was being unloaded, Taylor told the baggage handlers who removed the heavy box, which had real speakers inside, that he was working with musicians who were performing that evening. He had even bought tickets to a local gig in case anyone asked.
At 2.30pm on Sunday, December 29, Ghosn left home and walked to the Grand Hyatt, where he was allowed to go for lunch, but instead of heading for one of the hotel's restaurants he took the lift to room 933, which had been booked under Peter Taylor's name. Michael and the fixer were waiting for him.
He changed clothes and put on a cap, glasses and a surgical facemask — common in Japan, even pre-pandemic. The three men left by a side entrance. They could not be sure, but did not think they were followed.
They drove to Tokyo's main railway station and boarded the 4.30pm bullet train to Shin-Osaka station. With new year looming "there were dozens of people in the carriage", Ghosn writes in his book, but nobody recognised him.
From Shin-Osaka they drove to the Star Gate Hotel, where Taylor had booked a room. There, while Taylor scrambled the pilots, Ghosn climbed into the box, from which the speakers had now been removed. Taylor locked it and he and the fixer pushed it out of the hotel room and wheeled it to a waiting black van.
'The sound of crazy hope'
Michael Taylor deliberately timed his arrival at Kansai's private jet terminal to be only 20 minutes before the scheduled departure time of 10.30pm. He told staff at the terminal the concert had finished late, brandishing his crumpled ticket stubs.
He was gambling that officials at the end of a long shift would be keen to wrap up and go home. He was right. Security staff waved the music box concealing Ghosn through the terminal and on to a conveyor belt leading up into the Bombardier's cargo hold, situated just behind the passenger cabin.
As Ghosn heard the whump of the cargo door closing and the engines firing up, he began to relax for the first time in more than a year. "The noise was the sound of crazy hope," he writes.
Shortly after 11pm, when the jet levelled off at 39,000ft at 600mph (965km/h) on "the long way" to Turkey over Russia (the usual shorter route would cross countries that have extradition treaties with Japan), Taylor opened the door from the main cabin to the cargo bay. He unlocked the box and Ghosn eased himself out. There were smiles, but it was too early to celebrate. The riskiest part of the journey was still to come.
The aircraft landed in Istanbul at 5.26am on December 30. The plan was for Ghosn to walk across the tarmac and on to a second private plane, a Bombardier Challenger 300, destined for Beirut. Taylor and the fixer would take a later commercial flight to Lebanon. Ghosn felt confident he would not be spotted.
The sun had not yet risen over the Bosphorus. But he had no way of knowing whether the Japanese authorities had rumbled him. He had been gone almost a full day by now. Could they have tipped off the Turkish police? Would the second jet even be there?
Ghosn smiled with relief as he spotted the Bombardier. Sucking in the freezing dawn air, he crossed the tarmac, walked up the steps and asked the flight attendant to "close up and go".
'You're my lioness'
Looking back now, those close to the operation think the subterfuge at the Grand Hyatt 20 hours earlier might not have been necessary. Detectives probably had not followed Ghosn from his house that day. "No one expects much to happen over new year in Japan," says one. "I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't bother to turn up that day. Japan isn't as disciplined as people think."
Little more than an hour later, at 6am, the jet with no passengers (officially) dipped low over the Mediterranean and bumped to a halt at the VIP Pavilion on the northern edge of Beirut's Rafic Hariri airport.
Ghosn, who had changed into dark trousers and a dark jacket, reached for the French passport the Japanese authorities had allowed him to keep in a pouch with a special security seal. He opened it only after landing in Beirut because he feared an electronic warning signal might be sent as the seal was broken.
As he stepped out, gazing up at the snow-tipped mountains above his home town, he told himself: "Finally, it's won."
At 6.10am Carole, who was visiting her parents in Lebanon and staying at her and her husband's house in Beirut, was woken by a phone call from a friend. "Go to your parents' house immediately. We have a surprise for you," he said.
She recalls: "My first thought was, 'Oh my God. It's bad news. Who calls at 6am?' " When Carole first saw her husband stepping out of a black Mercedes with blacked-out windows, she ran to him and "hugged him tighter than I have ever done". Ghosn told her: "You're my lioness. You fought so hard for me."
The price
Ghosn and some of those close to him are reported to have paid almost £800,000 to Promote Fox, a company linked to the Taylors, for their pains.
The whole operation might have cost several times that figure. He also forfeited his £11 million bail. Even so, the flight was the bargain of the century. It was a very happy new year. "Beyond happy, a miracle!" Carole laughs.
Ghosn's epic runner raises so many questions it's hard to know where to start, but perhaps it's best to begin with: why risk it? Had he been caught, it would have been interpreted as incontrovertible proof of his guilt. He would have been convicted and almost certainly never released.
"There's a good phrase in English that says, 'When you're living in hell, keep walking.' I was living in hell," he explains.
"There was endless interrogation in jail, without lawyers. They said if I did not confess they'd target my family. I was not allowed to see Carole or my children [Ghosn has four children with his first wife, Rita].
"I would have faced a trial that would have lasted at least five years, with everyone reminding me that the Japanese prosecutors had a 99.4 per cent conviction rate. I had to walk — not to escape justice but to escape injustice."
Can he be right? Can Japanese justice really be that biased against the defendant? Yes, says a British businessman who knows to his cost how the country's business and legal systems work.
Michael Woodford exposed a £1 billion fraud at Olympus, one of Japan's best-known companies, which he ran a decade ago. For his pains he was fired. He left Tokyo and waged a battle from afar in the world's media that eventually saw Olympus's top brass plead guilty.
"I don't believe Ghosn would have received a fair trial," he says. "Those accused are often detained for extraordinarily lengthy periods of time without access to lawyers and their families. Defendants do not receive due process."
Japan insists its legal system is on a par with other industrialised nations.
Ghosn's defence
Ghosn uses his book to set out his defence. The charges against him are brain-fryingly complicated but boil down to three claims.
First, prosecutors say, he conspired to under-report £60m in earnings to be made after his retirement, mainly in non-compete agreements and advisory fees.
Second, he is accused of attempting to transfer on to Nissan's books personal losses of £12m.
Ghosn's Nissan salary was paid in yen. To protect its value in case of currency fluctuations, he had arranged a foreign exchange "hedge" (insurance policy) with a Japanese bank.
Unprecedented fluctuations in the value of the yen and Nissan's share price during the global financial crisis breached the terms of the hedge, leaving him on the hook for £12m. He tried to get Nissan to provide the additional collateral he needed to persuade the bank not to call in the debt.
Third, prosecutors allege he diverted for personal gain £4m of £27m worth of performance fees paid to a Nissan dealer in Oman. Some of the £4m was used to buy a luxury yacht via a company owned by Carole, prosecutors say.
Ghosn insists that, far from concealing the £60m retirement money, Nissan did not commit to pay it, he never received any of it and he never will. "How can I enrich myself if I did not receive the money?"
He admits trying to avoid the £12m losses, but says that Nissan agreed to provide the collateral he needed. Despite this, the arrangement "never happened" because the Japanese regulator nixed it on conflict-of-interest grounds.
As for the £4m he is said to have diverted, he insists none was diverted.
Unanswered questions
Critics in Tokyo question Ghosn's assertions. Why, they ask, did his former colleague Hiroto Saikawa admit that when he was representative director on Nissan's board he had signed letters documenting Ghosn's post-retirement earnings?
Why, too, did Nissan plead guilty to making misleading disclosures about the payments and agree to a £12m fine? Ghosn says Saikawa's evidence is unreliable. In a statement, Nissan says it "carried out a robust and thorough internal investigation that included external lawyers" that had uncovered "substantial and convincing evidence" that Ghosn "intentionally committed serious misconduct".
Critics are also unconvinced the £27m paid to the dealer in Oman constituted, as Ghosn claims, "legitimate sales and marketing payments". Ghosn insists it was "all justified and decided by Nissan and based on business performance".
If Ghosn is innocent, as he claims, how does he explain that last September he agreed to pay £800,000 to settle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations he hid more than £110m of his pay package at Nissan?
"I wanted to fight but my lawyers told me to settle" to avoid £7m in legal fees and the distraction. "And remember," he adds, "there is no admission of guilt."
Ghosn makes a strong case, but many in Japan cast him as a gaijin (outsider) who "crossed the red line out of sheer greed", as The Nikkei, Japan's leading financial newspaper, thundered after his arrest.
Legendary lifestyle
His declared income hardly left him poor. He had at least three salaries: in 2017 £5m from Nissan, £6.4m from Renault and £1.5m from Mitsubishi, which was also part of the alliance.
The alliance provided five homes for him, in Amsterdam, Paris, Tokyo, Beirut and Rio de Janeiro. The £7m Beirut home, to which he still has access after a Lebanese court ruling, was refurbished by Nissan at a cost of £6m.
His lifestyle was legendary. He threw a Marie Antoinette-themed celebration at the Palace of Versailles for Carole's 50th birthday, complete with a 4ft pyramid of choux pastries and costumed actors in pompadour wigs. He says he paid all the bills for the party in full.
Critics allege Renault ending up losing £45,000 "in kind" — the company had a corporate sponsorship deal with Versailles and one of its free room-hire credits was used to secure the venue.
Is it possible that as he grew ever more powerful at Nissan — he became chairman as well as CEO — Ghosn blurred the lines between what was company business that Nissan should have paid for and what was personal that should have been on his tab?
"How can you blur your own interests with those of the company?" he protests. "Renault and Nissan have internal auditors, outside auditors, chief financial officers, controllers that count all the expenses."
He adds that the homes he enjoyed belonged to Nissan, and still do. They were bought because "it was cheaper and more secure than staying in hotels".
He says he paid £8000 monthly rent — "not mates' rates" — on the Amsterdam house that was designated his home. The alliance's head office is in the Netherlands. His Beirut home, which also served as an office, was "a dump, an old house that had been abandoned for 20 years" when Nissan bought it and needed rebuilding from top to bottom. He is trying to buy it from his former employer. (Good luck with that.)
Ghosn's critics ask why Nissan would go through the public embarrassment of a criminal investigation if there was no case to answer. Why not just sort it out internally or cover it up?
Ghosn v Japan
As Woodford learnt at Olympus, Japanese businesses, untroubled by tame local media, can be adept at sweeping their dirty secrets under the carpet.
Ghosn says Nissan executives were so determined to stop Ghosn driving through what they feared would be a full merger with Renault that they needed "to put me completely out of the picture — that meant putting me in jail".
He explains: "Japan has become nationalistic. There was talk about the 're-Japanisation' of Nissan." Leaked emails show he was the victim of a corporate takedown, he insists.
One from a senior Nissan executive pledged to "neutralise the initiatives of Carlos Ghosn before it is too late". Nissan says the "facts surrounding the misconduct will be shown and the law will take its course".
Those who know Nissan and Ghosn well are not so sure merger fears fully explain Nissan's actions. They say the firm moved against him partly because he had blurred the lines between the corporate and the personal.
"He was taking the piss and the resentment in Tokyo simply reached boiling point," one former senior Nissan executive says.
"He cut costs so deeply that executives would buy their own stationery. His nickname was Le Cost Killer. But then he would go and use the corporate jet for journeys that might have involved meetings but definitely involved seeing Carole.
"And did he really need all those houses? I don't think he crossed the legal line, but many in Japan thought he crossed the moral line and were determined to make him pay."
Another former colleague points out that while it is true Nissan had internal and external auditors counting every penny, they reported to Ghosn. "He had too much power over spending decisions."
What happens next?
What will happen next? Ghosn cannot leave Lebanon for fear Japan might bring extradition proceedings against him in any other country he sets foot. The criminal legal proceedings in Japan have been suspended.
Could he stand trial in Lebanon? "We've been asking for it," he insists, although he must know that Tokyo will never agree to it. For now, Ghosn is trying to clear his name via his book.
The closest he will possibly get to a trial is the one that has just started in Tokyo of his co-accused Greg Kelly, Nissan's US-born former general counsel (top lawyer). He is charged with helping Ghosn to understate his pay.
Japanese prosecutors are likely to try to turn Kelly's trial into Ghosn's. If they can get enough mud to stick to Ghosn as well as Kelly, they may convict one in Tokyo District Court and the other in the court of public opinion in absentia.
Does Ghosn worry his former colleague, who has pleaded innocent, will pay the price for his great escape? Worse, does he fear Kelly, who is 64, in poor health and faces 10 years in jail if convicted, may try to seek leniency in return for incriminating his former boss?
"We have many lawyers and professors of law who say that the accusation against him is hollow. Knowing the person as I do and respect a lot, I don't think he will be tempted by a legal bargain."
What about the Taylors? They could soon find themselves shuffling into a Japanese courtroom in prison jumpsuits.
They checked before hatching the escape plot that they would not be violating any US laws, but did not investigate whether they might have a case to answer in Tokyo. A federal magistrate in Boston approved Tokyo's extradition request in September. The Taylors have appealed.
Does Ghosn feel guilty that they face the prospect of the very jail time they helped him to avoid? "No comment," he replies.
'Simple pleasures'
Ghosn is the ultimate global citizen. Born in Brazil, the son of Lebanese migrants, he moved to Lebanon at the age of 6 and was educated in Beirut and Paris. He started work at the French tyremaker Michelin.
After the formation of the Renault-Nissan alliance in 1999 he became Nissan's CEO in 2001 and Renault's four years later. He rescued Nissan from near bankruptcy and put the alliance on a par with Toyota, VW and General Motors in terms of the number of cars sold.
He would regularly flit between Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris and Tokyo in a working week on the company's Gulfstream G650, call sign NI55AN. How's he coping with his constrained life?
"I don't miss the travel," he says. "I'm enjoying simple pleasures: being with Carole and my kids."
But he's keeping his business hand in. He has launched a management course at Lebanon's Holy Spirit University of Kaslik to train local entrepreneurs and help spark the economic growth Lebanon so badly needs. "The country has one resource — its population."
Leading Lebanese politicians have called for him to join the government — or what passes for one. Ghosn says he might be an informal adviser, but "after my problems with two companies with government links, I want one place in the world where I can live without politics".
What is certain is Ghosn's escape will not be the final chapter of his story. There are so many unresolved plotlines. What will happen to him, the Taylors, Kelly, Nissan?
The fallout for the company has implications for the 6000 workers who make the popular Qashqai, Juke and Leaf models in Sunderland. Nissan's share price tanked after Ghosn's arrest and, with Brexit looming, the factory's future is uncertain.
After spending days in Beirut unpicking the threads, I don't think this story will have a happy ending for anyone — with the possible exception of the man I watch walking back out of the Hotel Albergo and across Abdel Wahab el-Inglizi St, tilting his head towards sunlight he feared he would never see again.
Written by: John Arlidge
© The Times of London
