Nissan’s former CEO fled house arrest in Japan in a wild Hollywood-worthy plot — allegedly using a team of mercenaries posing as musicians to smuggle him out of the country in an instrument case, reports said.
Accused embezzler Carlos Ghosn then used a relay of private jets to flee all the way from Tokyo to his family’s heavily guarded pink mansion in Lebanon, a nation which does not have an extradition treaty with Japan.
“I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system,’’ the defiant former auto honcho said in a statement Tuesday.
“I have not fled justice. I have escaped injustice and political persecution.’’
The wealthy 65-year-old former auto honcho had been out on $14 million bail, confined to house arrest — and under ’round-the-clock Japanese guard — at his tony Tokyo apartment when he escaped Sunday.
In a bizarre scheme allegedly orchestrated by his wife in the US, a group of ex-special forces soldiers posing as musicians specializing in a Gregorian band and toting music equipment strolled past Japanese security guards and entered the pad, according to the Lebanese news channel MTV.
Ghosn, who stands at just under 5-foot-6, climbed into “one of the boxes intended for the transfer of musical instruments,’’ the news station said — possibly a roughly 6-foot-tall double-base case.
He was then carted out in the case when the group left, after a “logical time for a concert had passed,’’ MTV said.
Japanese authorities had the door to his home under 24-hour video surveillance — but, per an April court agreement, Ghosn’s camp didn’t have to turn over each month’s recordings until the 15th of the following month, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Ghosn is believed to have been spirited out of the country on a chartered Bombardier jet from Kansai International Airport in Osaka — a six-hour drive from Toyko — around 11:10 p.m. Sunday, the Journal said.
The plane landed at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul early Monday, reports said. Ghosn then boarded a smaller plane belonging to the Turkish company MNG Jet Havacilik AS that departed about 30 minutes later for Rafic Hariri Airport in Beirut, Lebanon.
Japanese authorities apparently had no idea that their most high-profile detainee had fled until hours later — and only then, from an MTV reporter.
The station worker approached Matahiro Yamaguchi, the Japanese ambassador to Lebanon, at a party in Beirut around 6 p.m. Monday and asked about Ghosn’s fleeing, The Guardian reported.
The stunned ambassador said his administration knew nothing about it — and spent the next few minutes furiously texting before abruptly leaving the event.
Ghosn’s scheme was blasted by the disgraced executive’s own lawyer, Junichiro Hironaka, who claimed that he was kept in the dark about his client’s illegal plot.
“His act is unforgivable and a betrayal of Japan’s justice system,’’ acknowledged Hironaka, nicknamed “The Razor’’ because of his sharp legal wit, per The Guardian.
Still, the lawyer, who said he last saw Ghosn on Christmas Day, added, “Maybe he thought he won’t get a fair trial.
“I can’t blame him for thinking that way,” Hironaka said, repeating Ghosn’s claim of innocence on the charges against him, which carry a maximum 15 years behind bars.
Known as “Le Cost Killer’’ while overseeing Nissan’s alliance with French automaker Renault, the flamboyant former head of Nissan became a celebrity in Japan over the years.
There was even a comic book featuring him — as a superhero.
He amassed no small fortune, nearly $121 million, The Guardian said — and once splurged some of it on a Marie Antoinette-themed bash in honor of his marriage to second wife Carole.
Japanese authorities arrested him in November 2018 and have since charged him with under-reporting $80 million in compensation earnings and siphoning off company funds for his own use.
Ghosn was expected to star in what had been called Japan’s trial of century in April.
Prosecutors had argued against giving him bail beforehand. But a Japanese court agreed to free Ghosn as long as he adhered to 15 restrictions, including not seeing his wife, although the couple was recently allowed by the court to speak by video.
Carole Ghosn, 53, is at least partly the reason her husband fled Japan, sources told the Journal.
Her fed-up husband had been steaming that the Japanese courts refused to allow them to see each other in person over the Christmas holiday, the newspaper said.
Ghosn also was increasingly under the impression that his trial was going to be pushed back a year, leaving him trapped in limbo, according to the Journal.
“He couldn’t see his wife. He couldn’t get dates for his trial. It was humiliation. It was moral torture,” a source said.
Carole Ghosn — who like her husband is of Lebanese descent and has a home in New York City, according to Japanese bail records — is reportedly with him now at their $15 million Beirut mansion.
It’s clear why Ghosn chose Lebanon to flee: He was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents, moved to Lebanon at age 6 and grew up there.
He is famous in Lebanon for his professional accomplishments and quickly became a cause célèbre after his arrest in Japan, with billboards appearing across Beirut proclaiming, “We are all Carlos Ghosn.’’
Perhaps most importantly, Japan has no extradition treaty with Lebanon.
Ghosn has Brazilian, Lebanese and French citizenship, the latter from time he spent there as an adult studying in Paris.
Lebanon authorities claimed Ghosn entered the country legally via the use of a French passport — although it’s unclear how.
Lawyer Hironaka said he still has Ghosn’s three passports, for Lebanon, France and Brazil, that his client had to turn over as a condition of bail.
“It would have been difficult for him to do this without the assistance of some large organization,” Hironaka told reporters.
“I want to ask him, ‘How could he do this to us?’ I wanted to prove he was innocent.’’
Lebanon’s MTV said Ghosn had met with President Michel Aoun.
Ghosn’s pal, Lebanese TV host Ricardo Karam, called the escapade “a big adventure’’ for his fugitive friend.
But a legal source noted the severity of events — and how they required more than one lapse in security to occur.
“For something like this to happen, everyone has to screw up: the Japanese, the Lebanese, Ghosn, everybody,’’ the source said.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t the first time Ghosn garnered the spotlight while escaping the public eye.
After a court date in March, he wore a surgical mask and dressed as a construction worker to try to fool the press and stop them from following him.
The scheme didn’t work.
Compiled by Olalekan Adeleye
NY Post