Chennai: Former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn looks set to walk free, for the second time since his arrest last year on financial misconduct charges, as a Japanese court granted him bail.
Set at 500 million yen or aproximately $4.5 million, the bail will see Ghosn move out of his Tokyo detention centre to prepare his defence. The Tokyo District Court revelaed details about the bail and its approval in its statement, on Thursday.
As it happened
Ghosn’s lawyers had on Monday filed the bail request after the former executive was indicted for aggravated breach of trust, accused of enriching himself at a cost of $5 million to Nissan from July 2017 through the same month last year.
Carlos Ghosn was initially released last month, but then re-arrested on 4 April on the new charges, returning to the same Tokyo detention centre where he had previously spent 108 days following his first arrest in November.
During the previous bail posting $9 million, Ghosn had vowed not to leave Japan and to live in a small court-appointed apartment in central Tokyo.
He has denied all the charges against him, with his spokesperson saying on Monday he would “vigorously defend himself against these baseless accusations and fully expects to be vindicated”.
The spokesperson said Ghosn was being detained ‘under cruel and unjust conditions, in violation of his human rights, in an effort by prosecutors to coerce a confession from him’.
According to reports, prosecutors are likely to appeal the court’s decision, delaying his immediate release, as he also faces two charges of deferring some $80 million of his salary and hiding this in official documents to shareholders and seeking to shift personal investment losses to the firm during the 2008 financial crisis.
Although Ghosn is free to leave the detention centre, his movements and communications will likely be strictly monitored and restricted in line with his previous bail conditions.
What next?
Japanese media reported on Tuesday that the French firm had offered a “management integration proposal” to Nissan, which was poised to reject it as they believe it does not provide equality to the Japanese company.
Unless re-arrested over further allegations, Ghosn will be free to organise his defence ahead of a possible trial that is likely to take months to prepare.
Ghosn’s lead lawyer Junichiro Hironaka has revealed that a trial as early as the autumn was “not possible for various reasons”.
The former auto executive’s lawyers have demanded he be tried separately from Nissan, which also faces charges for submitting the suspect financial documents, and have voiced fears he will not receive a fair trial.