Mitsubishi also sacked Carlos Ghosn as president

In a brief statement, group directors found it "difficult" to keep the powerful 64-year-old leader in office, arrested a week ago in Tokyo.

After his arrest, Mitsubishi immediately announced a meeting to vote on his dismissal. The board began at the group's headquarters and brought together seven members, including executive director Osamu Masuko and two senior executives from Nissan, Mitsubishi's largest shareholder (34% stake).

This society, The smaller group of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubish alliance, with 1.2 million cars sold a year, decided to dismiss the man who had saved the company in 2016, while She was plunged into a scandal of falsification of data.

Last Thursday, Nissan's board of directors had sacked Mr. Ghosn as president "based on the abundance and compelling nature of the evidence," according to a spokesman.

Today, Ghosn is only the CEO of the Alliance and the French group Renault, which has launched an audit to verify its remuneration, announced the French government.

"Although there are no tangible accusations," Ghosn will not be replaced, said the French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire. The interim speech is in the hands of his deputy, Thierry Bolloré.

For its part Hiroto Saikawa, the executive director of Nissan, sent a message to the employees of the company. According to a source close to the company, he again expressed his "dismay" at the events and said that he would do everything possible because the Ghosn case "does not affect the relations in the company. "Alliance" nor the "daily operations" of Nissan.

However, he stressed "inequality" in the alliance, where power is concentrated in one man and prevents any strategic discussion between Renault and Nissan.

Saikawa will attend an alliance meeting in the Netherlands this week, marked by employees and badysts for years of tension.

The cause

during Carlos Ghosn remains in custody in a prison in North Tokyo and denies the charges.

On the basis of documents submitted by the group to the Japanese financial authorities between 2011 and 2015, the prosecution suspects that it has concealed half of its revenues from Nissan.

Ghosn reportedly reduced his Nissan chairman 's board of directors earnings by about 5 billion yen (38 million euros) over five years from 2011.

According to the Japanese press, it would have been the same in the next three years, so that the amount would rise to 8,000 million yen, not counting the 4,000 million capital gains of its shares .

According to sources quoted by the business paper Nikkei, Ghosn received 2 billion yen a year as CEO of Nissan until early 2010, which was then not public.

At that time, a law changed things, and it was at that time that Ghosn would have reduced his salary by about one billion yen to avoid criticism, while deferring the payment of the balance for the rest of his retirement. All with the complicity of his right hand, Greg Kelly, was also arrested.