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Carlos Ghosn says his arrest was part of a ‘conspiracy’

Former Nissan CEO also frets about the fairness of his trial, and laments the poor performance and lack of vision at the company he once lead in the video released overnight.


Overnight, Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO and chairman of Renault and Nissan, published a seven-and-a-half-minute video stating his innocence, and claiming he was arrested as part of a "conspiracy".

The video was recorded prior to Ghosn's re-arrest last week, when he was out on bail.

Although Ghosn claims he is "innocent of all the charges that have been brought against me", the former Nissan CEO didn't provide any evidence to substantiate his assertion.

Instead he quickly moved on to his second message: "I love Japan, and I love Nissan.

"Nobody spends 20 years in a country, nobody works 20 years in the leadership of a company without love and without attachment and without engagement, particularly these years have been marked by so many accomplishments and so much result."

Ghosn then went on to his main point: that he was arrested "not about specific events" or "dictatorship", but because of "backstabbing" and a "conspiracy" by senior management.

Although he said we knew who was behind this, Ghosn didn't name names, merely referring to them as a "few executives who, obviously, for their own interest and for their own selfish fears are creating a lot of value destruction."

The former CEO said these people were fearful for Nissan's autonomy as part of the "convergence" of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and possible merger with Renault.

While saying he was the "fiercest defender of the autonomy of Nissan", he also stated its future autonomy "must be based on performance".

Nissan's current performance, in Ghosn's opinion, is "not good" with poor management responsible for numerous profit downgrades and scandals.

Lambasting the Alliance's newfound desire for consensus, Ghosn said this was "not a vision for an industry as competitive as the car industry" and "from time to time that leadership is exercised, and leadership means we do what's good for the company not for what you are capable to agree on."

Closing off, he said his greatest wish was for a fair trial, but his lawyers "don't share with me a lot of serenity about the fairness of the trial."

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