Carlos Ghosn Felt Stars Médit Big Pay. His accusers say that he took it too far.

Mr. Ghosn has kept houses in Paris, Amsterdam, Beirut and Rio de Janeiro; shuttles around the world on a business jet; and dined with heads of state. He collected contemporary art, invested in wineries and in 2016 rented Versailles to celebrate his marriage with his second wife, Carole, on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. The evening was inspired by Sofia Coppola's film "Marie Antoinette".

At the time when prosecutors boarded his company's plane Monday at Haneda Airport in Tokyo to take him for questioning, Mr. Ghosn had been involved in several feuds over the salary of its leaders, a recurring plot in his career. He has earned several million dollars as President and CEO of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Motors. His remuneration sometimes caught the wrath of investors and politicians, including Emmanuel Macron, the current French president, when he was finance minister in 2016.

"He was arguing all the time about whether he was being properly compensated," said Robin Ferracone, founder of Farient Advisors, an executive compensation consulting firm. "The question was whether it should be compared to Japanese standards, international standards, or American standards."

In Japan, Mr. Ghosn's salary far exceeded that of his counterparts. As president of Nissan last year, he reported revenues of 735 million yen, more than four times the salary of the president of Toyota.

"There has always been a mismatch between the salaries of Western leaders and those of Japanese," said Christopher Richter, Deputy Director of Research on Japan at CLSA, an investment and brokerage group. Even if "compared to executives in other countries, some people would consider him underpaid," Richter said. "I guess you could say that there was something of a culture conflict in that."

Mr. Ghosn was unrepentant about his pay and engaged in discussions when discussing his accomplishments. When the Financial Times asked him this year he was too paid, he laughed. "You will not have a C.E.O. says," I'm overpaid, "he said.

Mr. Ghosn was born in Brazil to Lebanese immigrants and settled in Beirut when he was a toddler.

He then studied engineering at an elite university in Paris, then worked at Michelin, the tire manufacturer, for 18 years.