LONDON – “It was the longest hour and a half of my life.” So Carlos Ghosn sums up his daring escape from Japan, hidden inside the case of a musical instrument, in an interview with the BBC. The way in which the former Renault Nissan CEO reached his home country Lebanon was known, but in the conversation with the British state broadcaster he adds a few details that were not yet known.
Until then one of the most powerful men in the world auto industry, Ghosn was arrested in Tokyo in November 2018 on charges of financial wrongdoing, always denied, which he called a conspiracy by Japanese authorities, resentful of the growing influence of Renault in the group and for its initiatives. “It was like being hit by a bus,” recalls the ex-CEO speaking to the BBC about the circumstances of the arrest. “The only memory I have of that moment is a shock, a shattering trauma.” Transported to prison and confined to a cell, “all of a sudden I had to learn to live without a watch, without a computer, without news, even without a ballpoint pen, without anything”.
The preventive detention for over a year, then under house arrest, during which he was nevertheless forbidden to meet his wife, were the motivation to try to escape at any cost, convinced that he could not have the possibility of defending himself in a country where 99.4 percent of the trials result in a conviction. “The plan was not to show my face, because I would risk being recognized,” Ghosn says in the interview. “And the only way to not show my face was to lock myself in a box or a suitcase”. In those days in Tokyo there were many concerts and so, with the help of the two Americans who pretended to be orchestral, the manager plans his great escape hidden inside the case of an instrument.
“When you enter the box”, the former CEO of Renault Nissan declares to the BBC, “you don’t think about the past, you don’t think about the future, you only think about the moment you are living. You are not afraid, you have no emotions. You know this is your only chance, because if you make a mistake you will pay with your life, in the sense that you will remain a hostage in the hands of Japan ”. In all, Ghosn remains sealed in the case for an hour and a half: “But for me it was like it was a year and a half.”
He gets out when he’s already on a private plane. After changing his flight in Turkey, the next morning he lands in Beirut, where he still lives: safe because Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Japan. But the two Americans who helped him escape Michael and Peter Taylor, handed over by the United States to Japanese justice, face a three-year prison sentence. And his ex-colleague at Nissan, Greg Kelly, currently under house arrest in Tokyo, also faces jail, accused of the same offenses. The drama that revolves around Ghosn, comments the BBC, is not over.
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