Nissan's council meets to end the two-decade reign of Ghosn

TOKYO (Reuters) – Nissan Motor Co will hold a meeting of the board of directors to overthrow its chairman Carlos Ghosn after the arrest of the venerated president, who ushered in his alliance with Renault.

The Franco-Japanese alliance, extended in 2016 to the Japanese Mitsubishi Motors, was deeply shaken by the arrest of Ghosn in Japan on Monday, while the group president and star of the sector, aged 64, was accused of financial misconduct .

Ghosn had shaped the alliance and pleaded for a closer merger, possibly with a complete merger between Renault and Nissan, at the request of the French government, despite strong reservations expressed by the Japanese firm.

Japanese prosecutors said Ghosn and chief executive Greg Kelly, who was also arrested, conspired to underestimate Ghosn's compensation at Nissan over the next five years from 2010, saying it represented about half of the 10 billion yen (88.47 million dollars).

Shin Kukimoto, deputy attorney general at the Tokyo District Procuratorate, said Thursday that court approval had been received a day earlier to detain Ghosn for 10 days, without being able to state whether he had admitted the charges. .

Nissan's board meeting will be held after 4:00 pm (07H00 GMT) Thursday at its headquarters in Yokohama and the company is expected to issue a statement afterwards, a senior Nissan official told reporters Wednesday, asking for anonymity, details being confidential.

Renault executives should participate by videoconference.

Japanese media said the meeting had started. Given the composition of Nissan's board of directors, Ghosn should be approved.

Nissan executives occupy five seats out of the nine board members, Renault's two loyalists and the other two are held by unaffiliated outside directors, a former bureaucrat and a race driver.

With Ghosn and Kelly still in detention, neither man will be able to vote or defend himself at the meeting. A majority vote of the remaining seven members of the board of directors will be sufficient to remove them from office.

Renault has refrained from sending Ghosn back as chairman of the board of directors, although he is still in detention alongside Kelly, whom Nissan also accuses of financial malpractices.

But Mitsubishi Motors plans to remove Ghosn from his position as chairman at a board meeting next week.

In the growing uncertainty about the future of the alliance, the Japanese Minister of Industry and the French Minister of Finance will meet Thursday in Paris to seek ways to stabilize it.

"For me, the future of the alliance is the biggest problem," said Nissan official about Ghosn's arrest. "It's obvious that at our age, we have to do things together. To separate would be impossible.

ENVIRONMENT PROHIBITED

Nissan said Monday that an internal investigation triggered by information from an informant had revealed that Mr. Ghosn had committed wrongdoing, including a personal use of the company's money and a sub-claim. declaration of his income for years.

Ghosn and Kelly have not commented on the charges and Reuters has not been able to reach them.

Prosecutors said Ghosn was being held at the Tokyo Detention Center, reputed for his austere diet, very different from his usual luxury lifestyle, including restrictions on sleep during the day and the obligation to wear a mask during the meeting with visitors. spread of the disease.

The detention house "is pretty cold at this time of year", said to Twitter, on the Internet, Takufumi Horie, a fraudster and a recognized fraudster.

Asahi Shimbun said Thursday, citing unnamed sources, that Ghosn had given Kelly the email order to give false statements about his pay. Tokyo prosecutors have probably seized the linked e-mails and could use them as evidence, according to the report.

Japan's largest-circulation daily, Yomiuri, cites unnamed sources that Nissan's internal investigation has revealed that since 2002, Mr. Ghosn instructed his older sister to pay about $ 100,000 a year to compensation for a non-existent advisory role.

The investigation revealed that Nissan discovered during the investigation that Ghosn's sister lived in a luxury apartment in Rio de Janeiro and bought it through a subsidiary abroad, but that she had not done any consulting work for the car manufacturer. Nissan shared information with prosecutors, Yomiuri said.

Nissan shares closed up 0.8%, which corresponds to a wider market, before the board meeting.

($ 1 = 113.0300 yen)