The Wild Story of How Nissan’s CEO Became A Wanted Fugitive

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//Soundtrack//

Try (Christopher Ledger Edit)

Luchii - Humming Bird

Pacific Coliseum - Ocean City

Catching Flies - The Long Journey Home

Antoine Cara - Leaving

David Keno - Golden Ticket

Dan Farley - Lorica

Burn Water - Nostalgia Dreams

Producer: Dagogo Altraide

[foxps]

The Japanese prosecutors pulled some pretty outrageous stuff, like demanding that he have no contact with his wife while under house arrest. Stunts like that are what you pull when you've got no case and you just want to bring someone to the point where they'll plea to any deal proposed in order to just make it stop. It happens in the US as well, but usually not to those with a public profile. The FBI even has a word for it: bumperlock - when they don't have enough to make a case, so they disrupt someone's life with overt surveillance and hope that it drives them to actually break the law.

[yellowird]

I've been a long term observer of the car industry.

Still remember when Nissan & Carlos used to stream their annual report meetings live on YT yearly, & I watched with great interest.

The turnaround of Nissan was remarkable under his reign. At least in the first 2/3 of his tenure.

Things started to go pear shaped with the unsuccessful collaboration with Daimler, the global material/ fuel price pressure (not his fault) on the Russian & South American ventures, the discontent among the conservative senior managements on committing into full EV before anyone else as a major carmaker. (Tesla was barely holding up as a carmaker than)

All the factors above & a few more I haven't listed wasn't great. But I don't believe it's the reason of his downfall.

The real reason is the moment he signalled to a change of governing structure within the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Group.

This new structure would in essence forego the independence of Nissan.

For years Renault & Nissan in name are the same group but operate largely as separate entities.

Here is my honest opinion. I believe Carlos has certainly did all that was alleged. But at the same time I also believe Nissan knew it all along & let him get away with it.

I do believe Nissan collaborate with the Japanese government to act the moment they found out their independence is at risk.

People underestimate there are certain cultural line you simply don't cross in Japan.

[yaasinm]

Don't think he is innocent but i do believe Japan and Nissan tried to backstab him for various reasons.

[michaellivingston]

I think you missed out on a lot of information in this video. Such as the takeover attempt by Hari Nada, or the fact that one of the top Nissan Lawyers had his Tokyo house raided and was let go from his position, when he found out that other Japanese Nissan officials were also stealing money.

[bad_money]

By exporting their culture through anime, manga, video games, etc, the Japanese have managed to promote themselves in a positive manner. Japan as a country is something else though, especially their judiciary.

[Tuppoo]

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Many of Mr. Ghosn's perks are things that would be classified as taxable perks in most countries. Having a private jet as a company perk isn't cheap, so one would quickly accrue a sizable tax debt. Nissan probably knew about these dishonest practices, and allowed Ghosn to do what he wanted, because they saw that it gave them a convenient and cheap way of disposing of him if necessary. They knew that the Japanese courts would take their side, especially since they would be ratting out their criminal CEO, who was also a foreigner. Since the CEO would be leaving because of criminal charges, Nissan probably wouldn't need to pay him a severance package. Also, Nissan would avoid a potential humiliating takeover by Renault.

[kidgroovie]

This video beats any movie plot. Although a fugitive, the feats he pulled are nothing short of impressive

[rabbit]

Key words - "defying Japanese business etiquette at every step." Although Ghosn was successful at turning around the company, he stepped on a lot of toes. For example, in every Japanese company if you are a permanent employee you cannot be fired except for extreme, egregious behavior (ex. - sexual harassment. Alternatively making a mistake and costing the company lots of money would not be a reason). Ghosn, however, not able to fire ineffective employees instead refused to pay bonuses. In all other companies these are automatic. (Not promoting bad employees is a common Japanese practice, or you are promoted in name only). Any foreigner working in a company that doesn't follow Japanese business practices quickly will find themselves out of a job or in a dead end career.

[umibooozu]

Really interesting. After his arrest, we start, here in France, to discover his megalomaniac side. And french justice started to check on him.... finally.
But for me the most interesting part was the public discovering Japanese justice: 99.9% of sentenced, unlimited time in jail without judgement, very poor human conditions there... On this point, there are few differences with China. And this story teach to many traveler to be VERY careful there

[trainingtheworld]

I'm glad you're talking about Carlos but you have skipped over some important cultural issues.
1. In Japan, the gaijin gets blamed for everything.
2. Japanese people have long memories.
3. The gaijin wasn't supposed to succeed.
Keep these points in mind and the whole story of Carlos Ghosn becoming a national piñata makes sense.
Also, you need to understand that when Carlos came into Nissan like a wrecking ball he stepped on some pretty big toes in and out of Nissan (especially Suppliers). There was grift all over the place and he cut off the revenue for a whole bunch of corrupt leeches that infested the company. As an example look at door handles. In the late 90's there were like 8 different suppliers of door handles just for Nissan. Carlos cut that down to like 3 in a year. So just imagine how many people this guy pissed off in a short period of time.

[ivohahn]

My view is that Goshn is both right, in his conclusion that Nissan planned to oust him, as well as guilty of channeling money into his own pockets (which he felt he deserved). He obviously has unique and valuable skills, yet his success also clouded his judgement.

[pierrerossouw]

Beautiful piece of work, as always, Dagogo! You are what YouTube was meant to be. Oh, and Woodford's book (about 3-4 comments below) would make an amazing episode. Nudge nudge.

[StevePhoenix]

I'm seeing far too many people defending Ghosn, so here's my take as a car enthusiast and former Ghosn-era Nissan owner. The Nissan revival is far from a rosy story. As mentioned in the video, Nissan laid off thousands of workers, despite Ghosn's luxurious lifestyle. Furthermore, Nissan's revival had to do with 2 things.

Firstly, they shared most of their platforms with Renault, which cut R&D costs significantly. They also outsourced their production line to countries with cheaper labour, such as Mexico. Furthermore, they discontinued the Silvia (their last true budget sportscar offering), while the Skyline was castrated and sold primarily as the Infiniti G-series in the States. As such, they cut costs, instead of increasing quality. It's no coincidence their reliability record has plummeted since Ghosn took over. One example is my 2011 Nissan Tiida. Its platform was the same as the Clio and it was made in Mexico. Moreover, it used Takata passenger airbags which were known already from the mid-2000s to have caused injuries and even deaths. When I bought the car, the dealer informed me of that and switched the passenger airbag off. It wasn't until 2019 that Nissan issued recalls for all the cars affected, 15 years into the cars production cycle.

Secondly, Nissan's success was largely a fluke. The Micra sales plummeted under Ghosn's regime. The Primera was discontinued altogether while the Almera was eventually replaced by the Tiida/Versa, which didn't sell well at all compared to the Almera and Sunny that came before it. What saved Nissan, was the increase in interest for off-road cars even for urbanites. Nissan cashed in initially with the X-Trail, which with the best will in the world, had modest sales, but their big hit was the Qashqai. The Qashqai was the laziest cash grab possible. It was essentially a Megane with slightly higher ride height marketed as a crossover. In spite of its off-road pretentions, it struggled off-road even by crossover standards and it was unexceptional from every technical standpoint plus the optional CVT gearbox was awful. However, somehow, it sold like hot cakes and became a top-selling car in Europe. Only the more recent versions of it have 4WD and genuine (yet modest) off-road capabilities

The only success story quality-wise Nissan had since Ghosn's takeover (at least here in Europe) is the GT-R. Even though it's a very technologically advanced car, it's still built using R&D from past Nissan models. The platform it's built on is similar to that of the 350Z and 370Z (and the Infinity G-series) while the engine derives from the VQ series line that's been around since 1994. Not only that, but the GT-R has barely changed since 2007.

If you look at Nissan's past accomplishments, the Ghosn era was one of austerity and stagnancy, not quality and innovation. Ghosn wasn't a true visionary, he was a technocrat with a good understanding of the industry, but complete lack of passion for cars (I wonder if he ever personally drove a Nissan). On top of that, he's a greedy megalomaniac who refuses to pay the price of his crimes.

[thedamnedatheist]

I think it was both; as you said, it was a brutal restructure at Nissan and Ghosn was the brains & face of that. It is literally straight out of Machiavelli, appoint someone to do the dirty work, then punish them for their methods, while keeping your own hands clean. Whereas Ghosn had an inflated ego & thought he could do no wrong.

[kevinbarry]

He did develop a very good reputation but you must remember it is in the context of Japan. Nissan was a disaster 20 years ago. So bad that even the Japanese government wouldn't touch it. However, how to fix it was not rocket science. Not at all. However Japan's corporate culture is so screwed up, along with much of its regular culture, that no Japanese manager could take the obvious steps necessary. So they brought in a foreigner. Not the first or last time this has been done in Japan. That is why he was able to hit those goals that seems so big. It was fairly simple. Drastic steps, but fairly obvious ones, needed to be taken. It is also not a coincidence that Nissan quality used to be considered on a level, almost, with Toyota and Honda. Since he took over it has hit the basement. Not to mention, at least in the United States, Nissan brand is considered something you buy if you have bad credit, no money, and aren't good at making decisions

[joesterling]

I think Japan's reputation in dealing with foreigners may be at least as equally tarnished as Carlos's reputation. Regardless of any evidence of his culpability, the fact is Nissan used the Japanese government as an extension of their corporate will. And they were all happy to be in bed together on this rendition. Time to cut the gaijin down to size, eh?

[Mr_Battlefield]

I appreciate your videos. Thank you for putting your heart into your video's. Keep up the great work.

[darlinger]

Been a big fan of your channel for years Cold Fusion

I hope u see this might i suggest that you put timestamps on the video since you already divide the video into small topics like “Who is this guy?” “ Why japanese gov hunted him ?” etc

It really helps getting up to speed on the topic at hand cause sometime i keep coming back to your videos for a refresher.

Thank you so much for your hardwork.

[JamecBond]

He seems like someone who was legitimately trying to get fair pay for his work, but the way in which he did it was inevitably going to end this way.

[bassett_green]

This case has always fascinated me because while he’s right that the Japanese white collar justice system is corrupt and he was almost certainly targeted a conspiracy … it’s also true that by every indication he *did* commit the crimes