Ex-Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn was spirited on charter flights from Japan to Istanbul, Turkey, and from there to Beirut — an escape made possible with the help of an airline employee who falsified records.
Ghosn slipped out of his Tokyo home moments after round-the-clock surveillance of his residence stopped on Sunday last week, Japan’s Sankei reported yesterday.
A private security company hired by Nissan Motor Co had been closely monitoring Ghosn while he was out on bail, the newspaper said, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Photo: AFP
The surveillance ended after Ghosn’s lawyer threatened the company with a lawsuit, it said.
Security camera footage reportedly showed that Ghosn simply walked out of his Tokyo home hours before fleeing the country.
Details have emerged on Ghosn’s path to freedom that allowed him to jump US$14 million bail, seemingly under the noses of Japanese authorities, and evade charges of financial misconduct that could carry a jail sentence of up to 15 years.
TURKISH CONNECTION
Details also emerged about the route Ghosn took to Lebanon, where he grew up and is considered something of a national hero.
Turkish airline company MNG Jet said that two of its airplanes were used illegally in Ghosn’s escape, first flying him from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul, and then on to Beirut, where he arrived on Monday and has not been seen since.
It said a company employee had admitted to falsifying flight records so that Ghosn’s name did not appear on them, adding that he acted “in his individual capacity” without MNG Jet’s knowledge.
Lebanese authorities have said Ghosn entered the country legally on a French passport, though he had been required to surrender all three of his passports to his lawyers under terms of his bail.
Interpol issued a wanted notice on Thursday for Ghosn, but Japan has no extradition treaty with Lebanon and it appeared unlikely he would be handed over.
The airplane carrying Ghosn landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, which is closed to commercial flights and used only for cargo and private flights, the Turkish Ministry of the Interior said.
“A transfer occurred in the cargo section” of the airport, ministry spokesman Ismail Catakli said. “In this way, Turkey was used as a transit point.”
A cargo company employee was aboard the flight to Beirut and immediately returned to Istanbul aboard the same jet, Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper said.
ARRESTED
The employee was one of seven people detained by Turkish authorities investigating how Ghosn passed through Turkey.
Two were released on Friday, while the five others were ordered arrested, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Lebanese Minister of Justice Albert Serhan told The Associated Press in an interview that Lebanon “will carry out its duties,” suggesting for the first time that Ghosn might be brought in for questioning.
On Thursday, Ghosn issued a statement — his second this week — seeking to distance his Lebanese wife and family from any role in his escape.
“The allegations in the media that my wife Carole and other members of my family played a role in my departure from Japan are false and misleading. I alone organized my departure. My family played no role,” he said.
Ghosn’s lawyer in Japan yesterday said that he felt outraged and betrayed by his client’s escape, but also expressed an understanding for his feelings of not being able to get a fair trial.
Referring to Japan’s judicial system, he said: “I was betrayed, but the one who betrayed me is not Carlos Ghosn.”
Takano described how Ghosn had been barred from seeing his wife, in what Takano called a violation of human rights, and that Ghosn worried whether he would get a fair trial because of prosecutors’ leaks to the media.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS