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The press is certainly painting him as a fairly classic example of a celebrity CEO whose real expertise is looting the companies he runs, rather than turning th

The press is certainly painting him as a fairly classic example of a celebrity CEO whose real expertise is looting the companies he runs, rather than turning them around. On the flip side of that... I quake with terror at the thought of ever being charged with a crime in Japan. Repeated interrogations without the right to have a lawyer present? Delaying charges in order to secure multiple detentions? Harsh conditions of bail? All of these things seem to be engineered to produce guilty pleas or convictions without a lot of pesky pushback from the accused.

Quarrelsome 7y ago
I quite like the rule about evidence without a warrant though. Its hard to make a solid rule on that one but it does feel off that the truth isn't admissible if malice was used to obtain it. Surely in its perfect abstract that malice is then a separate trial as long as the evidence is genuine.
- mkohlmyr 7y ago
  Over time it is probably preferable not to permit the use of malice by the government against its citizens to ascertain the truth.
- arkades 7y ago
  It does feel off. That’s why lawyers have a saying, “bad facts make bad law.” That is, people tend to side with what feels right In a given situation rather than what is the best policy for a government to execute over millions of people over centuries.
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  Violating the bill of rights carries no criminal consequences. It's such an open ended set of rules I'm not sure its feasible for it to do so.
- peteretep 7y ago
  Something can be a good idea on a one-off basis and a terrible idea when generalising out. Having a fair legal system with strong protections for citizens against the authorities trumps any individual conviction.
- maxfan8 7y ago
  You should take a look at the good faith exception: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/good_faith_exception_to_exclusionary_rule https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/good_faith_exception_to_excl... The Supreme Court only allows the exclusion of incriminating evidence only when it yields “appreciable deterrence”. In practice, this means that if police obtained a valid warrant (at the time), then the evidence is still admissible even if the warrant was later found to be illegal. Case: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/229/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/229/
bluedevil2k 7y ago
In another article about Ghosn, it stated that in Japan there's a 99% conviction rate. That is scary.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  If we read the same article, it suggested that Britain’s conviction rate was around 87%^H^H^H 80%. (Hat tip to peteretep for the updated figure).
  - kkshmz 7y ago
    In anyway, it seems like a corrupt or wronged system. Being a Japanese born and living here, it seems very different in terms of what e-Gov tech practices can do over here than in similar regards in the US like Palantir, etc. Would be great if there was some resources to pave this kind of path, hell, we still use FAX and our IT ministry hasn't used a USB before.
  - peteretep 7y ago
    80% in the UK vs 99% in Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate
    - dmix 7y ago
      Most criminal defence attorneys will admit that the most of the people they work with are guilty. It’s just how the police and justice system works when you get caught and what cases go forward. But 99% will always be insane and a giant red flashing light indicator of something is wrong. At least 5-10% of people get off on technical details the police or prosecutors messed up or just good lawyering of guilty people. The rest the cases fall apart before trial because of witnesses or other evidence and turns of events. (I’m pulling these numbers out of my ass just to make a point). The problems in Japan are with the due process and a serious lack of rights of the accused. Even if we completely ignore the conviction rates.
      - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anonu 7y ago
> painting him as a fairly classic example of a celebrity CEO whose real expertise is looting the companies he runs I don't see that. Most press commends him for turning around Nissan and Renault. He may have gotten greedy. His downfall was more due to social norms. Greed is perceived in a good light in the USA. Greed is a cardinal sin in Japan. (I'm generalizing) Ghosn probably felt he should have taken the GM job when Obama offered it to him. His counterpart there was easily making more than he was despite all the financial engineering he had to do to get what he viewed as fair compensation
- braythwayt 7y ago
  I think it’s a gross oversimplification to say that greed is perceived in a good light in the USA. Financial inequality and the ever-widening gap between CEO pay and worker pay is a contentious subject in the USA as elsewhere. That being said, nobody does anything about it in the USA for various reasons, and I’ll accept that the USA is certainly one of the easier places in the world to get away with egregious greed.
  - anonu 7y ago
    I employed a fair bit of hyperbole in my previous comment, so take it with a grain of salt. Japan and France, where Ghosn was CEO of 2 companies, have strict compensation caps for executives. In the USA there is no such thing. The cultural perception of making a lot of money is different in Japan and France vs USA.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      > In the USA there is no such thing. That's not strictly true. There is a tax code provision that prohibits companies from counting executive compensation of over $1MM as an operating expense, the intention being to discourage high compensation by essentially putting an additional tax on the excess compensation. It's not very effective, particularly since "performance-based" compensation was exempt until a couple years ago. There are also harder limits for executive (and other people's) compensation in government contracting. Somewhat more effective than the above, but still not great.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> celebrity CEO whose real expertise is looting the companies he runs, rather than turning them around Why can’t it be both? We have evidence he turned the companies around [1]. And we have evidence he paid personally-affiliated companies money for dubious services [2], a track record that has been probed by multiple countries [3]. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/276268.Turnaround https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/276268.Turnaround [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/lebanese-firm-said-to-link-nissan-renault-cash-to-ghosn-s-son https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/lebanese-... [3] https://www.france24.com/en/20190703-france-police-raid-renault-hq-ghosn-wedding-investigation-versailles https://www.france24.com/en/20190703-france-police-raid-rena...
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Hallelujah. When I see stories like this, I'm always reminded of what a strong, natural human predilection there is to choose sides. But when I look at the reports, the simplest explanation seems to me that both sides are true: 1. Ghosn was a talented CEO who engineered big turnarounds at Renault and Nissan, who also was likely embezzling from the company. 2. The Japanese justice system is fundamentally tilted toward the prosecution, and is especially unfair to powerful foreign individuals.
- euske 7y ago
  Ghosn kind of reminds me of this quote: "Great men are almost always bad men." Personally, I hope this to be a good show to Japanese people. The timing is good too. It is finally dawning on people in Japan that their government might not be entirely fair, and how the extreme rich like him can do shady dealings. Many of them have been too naive.
dragonsh 7y ago
Not every country follows British common law jurisdiction like USA. Japan, China and Many countries in Europe including Germany follows continental law. So probably just assuming that lawyers presence will change something substantially is not appropriate. In those system a prosecutor only brings the case when they are convinced there is enough evidence to prosecute otherwise they themselves be on a hook, unlike common law jurisdiction. The only question here should be is the person given chance to defend himself and I believe in this case Japan did give enough chances so much so that the person moved all his wealth with his wife outside of Japan during trial. Send families to secure destinations with all the wealth. Now himself absconded to a non extradition country. I hope such punishments are meted our to CEO of Enron, Lehman and many others in USA but didn’t happen. Carlos knew very well the Japanese system when he agreed to work with Nissan. So all those stories of him being a victim is a pr run by his family and money.
- rmah 7y ago
  The CEO of Enron, Jeff Skilling, was convicted and sentenced to 24 years in prison. He cut a deal later to get it reduced to 14 years, of which he served 12 before being released on parole. Not sure what crime you think the CEO of Lehman Bros. committed (is not having enough pull with the Fed and US gov to get a bailout like the other large banks a crime?) As for the "many others", Martha Stewart went to jail for five months. Bernie Madoff got a 150 year sentence and is still in jail. Timothy Rigas (Adelphia Communications) served over 10 years in prison. Etc, etc. If Carlos would were in the US, his assets would have been frozen and not permitted to flee.
laurieg 7y ago
Another fun tidbit of the Japanese system: they have to release you if they've held you for 23 days, so they give you back your possessions, walk you out the door and then swarm you with police five seconds later to arrest you again for a slightly different crime. Of course, how many of us mere mortals will be keeping our jobs after no-showing and zero contact for 3 weeks?
- glandium 7y ago
  Note that's basically what happened to Ghosn after he paid bail the first time. Let's remember this: he had to pay bail to be released to be reincarcerated. After which he paid bail again...

Quarrelsome 7y ago

I quite like the rule about evidence without a warrant though. Its hard to make a solid rule on that one but it does feel off that the truth isn't admissible if malice was used to obtain it. Surely in its perfect abstract that malice is then a separate trial as long as the evidence is genuine.

mkohlmyr 7y ago
Over time it is probably preferable not to permit the use of malice by the government against its citizens to ascertain the truth.
arkades 7y ago
It does feel off. That’s why lawyers have a saying, “bad facts make bad law.” That is, people tend to side with what feels right In a given situation rather than what is the best policy for a government to execute over millions of people over centuries.
bcrosby95 7y ago
Violating the bill of rights carries no criminal consequences. It's such an open ended set of rules I'm not sure its feasible for it to do so.
peteretep 7y ago
Something can be a good idea on a one-off basis and a terrible idea when generalising out. Having a fair legal system with strong protections for citizens against the authorities trumps any individual conviction.
maxfan8 7y ago
You should take a look at the good faith exception: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/good_faith_exception_to_exclusionary_rule https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/good_faith_exception_to_excl... The Supreme Court only allows the exclusion of incriminating evidence only when it yields “appreciable deterrence”. In practice, this means that if police obtained a valid warrant (at the time), then the evidence is still admissible even if the warrant was later found to be illegal. Case: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/229/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/564/229/

bluedevil2k 7y ago

In another article about Ghosn, it stated that in Japan there's a 99% conviction rate. That is scary.

braythwayt 7y ago
If we read the same article, it suggested that Britain’s conviction rate was around 87%^H^H^H 80%. (Hat tip to peteretep for the updated figure).
- kkshmz 7y ago
  In anyway, it seems like a corrupt or wronged system. Being a Japanese born and living here, it seems very different in terms of what e-Gov tech practices can do over here than in similar regards in the US like Palantir, etc. Would be great if there was some resources to pave this kind of path, hell, we still use FAX and our IT ministry hasn't used a USB before.
- peteretep 7y ago
  80% in the UK vs 99% in Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate
  - dmix 7y ago
    Most criminal defence attorneys will admit that the most of the people they work with are guilty. It’s just how the police and justice system works when you get caught and what cases go forward. But 99% will always be insane and a giant red flashing light indicator of something is wrong. At least 5-10% of people get off on technical details the police or prosecutors messed up or just good lawyering of guilty people. The rest the cases fall apart before trial because of witnesses or other evidence and turns of events. (I’m pulling these numbers out of my ass just to make a point). The problems in Japan are with the due process and a serious lack of rights of the accused. Even if we completely ignore the conviction rates.
    - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

anonu 7y ago

> painting him as a fairly classic example of a celebrity CEO whose real expertise is looting the companies he runs I don't see that. Most press commends him for turning around Nissan and Renault. He may have gotten greedy. His downfall was more due to social norms. Greed is perceived in a good light in the USA. Greed is a cardinal sin in Japan. (I'm generalizing) Ghosn probably felt he should have taken the GM job when Obama offered it to him. His counterpart there was easily making more than he was despite all the financial engineering he had to do to get what he viewed as fair compensation

braythwayt 7y ago
I think it’s a gross oversimplification to say that greed is perceived in a good light in the USA. Financial inequality and the ever-widening gap between CEO pay and worker pay is a contentious subject in the USA as elsewhere. That being said, nobody does anything about it in the USA for various reasons, and I’ll accept that the USA is certainly one of the easier places in the world to get away with egregious greed.
- anonu 7y ago
  I employed a fair bit of hyperbole in my previous comment, so take it with a grain of salt. Japan and France, where Ghosn was CEO of 2 companies, have strict compensation caps for executives. In the USA there is no such thing. The cultural perception of making a lot of money is different in Japan and France vs USA.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > In the USA there is no such thing. That's not strictly true. There is a tax code provision that prohibits companies from counting executive compensation of over $1MM as an operating expense, the intention being to discourage high compensation by essentially putting an additional tax on the excess compensation. It's not very effective, particularly since "performance-based" compensation was exempt until a couple years ago. There are also harder limits for executive (and other people's) compensation in government contracting. Somewhat more effective than the above, but still not great.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> celebrity CEO whose real expertise is looting the companies he runs, rather than turning them around Why can’t it be both? We have evidence he turned the companies around [1]. And we have evidence he paid personally-affiliated companies money for dubious services [2], a track record that has been probed by multiple countries [3]. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/276268.Turnaround https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/276268.Turnaround [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/lebanese-firm-said-to-link-nissan-renault-cash-to-ghosn-s-son https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-22/lebanese-... [3] https://www.france24.com/en/20190703-france-police-raid-renault-hq-ghosn-wedding-investigation-versailles https://www.france24.com/en/20190703-france-police-raid-rena...

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Hallelujah. When I see stories like this, I'm always reminded of what a strong, natural human predilection there is to choose sides. But when I look at the reports, the simplest explanation seems to me that both sides are true: 1. Ghosn was a talented CEO who engineered big turnarounds at Renault and Nissan, who also was likely embezzling from the company. 2. The Japanese justice system is fundamentally tilted toward the prosecution, and is especially unfair to powerful foreign individuals.
euske 7y ago
Ghosn kind of reminds me of this quote: "Great men are almost always bad men." Personally, I hope this to be a good show to Japanese people. The timing is good too. It is finally dawning on people in Japan that their government might not be entirely fair, and how the extreme rich like him can do shady dealings. Many of them have been too naive.

dragonsh 7y ago

Not every country follows British common law jurisdiction like USA. Japan, China and Many countries in Europe including Germany follows continental law. So probably just assuming that lawyers presence will change something substantially is not appropriate. In those system a prosecutor only brings the case when they are convinced there is enough evidence to prosecute otherwise they themselves be on a hook, unlike common law jurisdiction. The only question here should be is the person given chance to defend himself and I believe in this case Japan did give enough chances so much so that the person moved all his wealth with his wife outside of Japan during trial. Send families to secure destinations with all the wealth. Now himself absconded to a non extradition country. I hope such punishments are meted our to CEO of Enron, Lehman and many others in USA but didn’t happen. Carlos knew very well the Japanese system when he agreed to work with Nissan. So all those stories of him being a victim is a pr run by his family and money.

rmah 7y ago
The CEO of Enron, Jeff Skilling, was convicted and sentenced to 24 years in prison. He cut a deal later to get it reduced to 14 years, of which he served 12 before being released on parole. Not sure what crime you think the CEO of Lehman Bros. committed (is not having enough pull with the Fed and US gov to get a bailout like the other large banks a crime?) As for the "many others", Martha Stewart went to jail for five months. Bernie Madoff got a 150 year sentence and is still in jail. Timothy Rigas (Adelphia Communications) served over 10 years in prison. Etc, etc. If Carlos would were in the US, his assets would have been frozen and not permitted to flee.

laurieg 7y ago

Another fun tidbit of the Japanese system: they have to release you if they've held you for 23 days, so they give you back your possessions, walk you out the door and then swarm you with police five seconds later to arrest you again for a slightly different crime. Of course, how many of us mere mortals will be keeping our jobs after no-showing and zero contact for 3 weeks?

glandium 7y ago
Note that's basically what happened to Ghosn after he paid bail the first time. Let's remember this: he had to pay bail to be released to be reincarcerated. After which he paid bail again...