TOKYO: Ousted Nissan Motor chairman Carlos Ghosn’s legal woes deepened yesterday with the start of a civil trial in Yokohama, Japan, where his former employer is seeking 10 billion yen ($95 million) in damages.
“The legal actions initiated today form part of Nissan’s policy of holding Ghosn accountable for the harm and financial losses incurred by the company due to (his) misconduct,” Nissan said in a statement.
Ghosn, who also ran French carmaker Renault SA, has been in Lebanon since January after fleeing Japan before he was due to stand trial. He denies any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors, who arrested Ghosn two years ago, have charged him with hiding 9.3bn yen ($88.6m) in compensation, enriching himself at Nissan’s expense through $5m payments to a Middle East car dealership and temporarily transferring personal financial losses to the automaker’s books.
The “Nissan civil lawsuit is an extension to the extremely unreasonable internal investigation with sinister intent by a portion of Nissan’s senior management and the unreasonable arrests and indictments by the public prosecutors,” Ghosn said in an emailed statement.
Ghosn, who has said he was removed from Nissan to thwart any merger with Renault, which already owns 43 per cent of the Japanese carmaker, was represented in the Yokohama court by lawyers.
The civil proceeding got underway as the criminal trial of former Nissan executive Greg Kelly, who is accused of helping Ghosn hide his earnings, continued at a court in Tokyo.
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