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The matter weighed on him. In 2010, Mr Kelly asked Mr Nada to begin the first in a series of secret plans to increase Mr Ghosn’s benefits and compensation, according to court testimony and internal Nissan documents.
Executive pay was a perilous political issue in France, Mr Nada said earlier this month, and if Mr Ghosn’s true pay had been revealed, the French government – as a major shareholder in Renault – would have pushed the company to fire him.
Mr. Nada, 56, joined Nissan as a junior legal advisor in 1990 and was fiercely loyal to the company. He started his career in Great Britain and by 2010 had become a senior executive.
He has kept his work a secret from Mr Ghosn, he wrote in a draft statement to prosecutors reviewed by The Times, in part because Mr Kelly convinced him that his boss, in his position as chief of the alliance, was a critical bulwark against the French government’s ambition for Renault to absorb Nissan, its junior partner.
For eight years, Mr. Nada worked “proactively and creatively” to implement Mr. Kelly’s instructions, he told the court, arranging to buy homes across the world for the Mr. Ghosn’s personal use and to conceal the amount of his remuneration.
His career progressed rapidly. In the spring of 2018, when Mr. Ghosn’s investigation began to merge, Mr. Nada wielded tremendous power, controlling Nissan’s legal, compliance, security and communications departments, among others. He was a primary advisor to its then CEO, Hiroto Saikawa, and Mr. Ghosn.
For years, Mr Nada had pushed aside questions from internal and external auditors about his work for Mr Ghosn, according to the documents. But in 2018, a Nissan whistleblower complained about Mr. Ghosn’s family’s travel expenses to a company auditor, Hidetoshi Imazu. The question, Mr. Imazu later told Nissan attorneys, prompted him to dig into Mr. Ghosn’s belongings, including one of the secret societies Mr. Nada had set up to acquire property.
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