The high-profile case involving former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn — indicted on charges of aggravated breach of trust and underreporting his executive pay — will move to the judiciary stage when the court, prosecutors and his defense team begin pre-trial proceedings later this month to sort out the points of contention and evidence. Since Ghosn and his lawyers deny all of the charges filed against him, however, the proceedings are expected to take longer than anticipated, and it is now believed that the opening of the trial, which was earlier speculated to begin as early as this fall, will be delayed possibly into next year.
Ghosn has been indicted on charges that he underreported his remuneration by some ¥9 billion over eight years in the automaker's annual financial reports and transferred some ¥1.8 billion in private investment losses to Nissan. He is also accused of misappropriating company money for personal use by having a Nissan subsidiary pay some ¥1.7 billion to a distributor in Oman, and siphoning off about ¥560 million from that amount and sending it to a Lebanese investment firm that he effectively controlled.
Since he has denied any wrongdoing, these charges will be contested in the trial. It will now be up to the court to determine whether Ghosn — who until his arrest last November led Nissan for 20 years after saving the major carmaker from the brink of collapse and headed the international auto alliance involving Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and France's Renault SA — engaged in the alleged wrongdoing. If so, it will have to determine how and why he did these things and how Nissan — which is also under indictment over the underreporting of Ghosn's executive pay — allowed its former charismatic leader to engage in the suspected acts for so long.