Carlos Ghosn contemplated the box in front of him. Freedom.
It was a large black wooden crate with steel reinforcements on the edges, the sort of case a band would use to transport large speakers or instruments.
Ghosn was listening to instructions from Michael Taylor, the former Green Beret he had hired to help maneuver the getaway.
Taylor was explaining, step by step, what the auto titan would need to do: Climb into the crate, and stay still. Let the lid be lowered. Once secured, the trunk — and he — would be in motion. Inside his box, he would be loaded onto a private jet with the rest of the luggage.
Ghosn was well versed in the private-jet lifestyle. He had flown everywhere on his Gulfstream as chief executive of two carmakers, Renault and Nissan. He was accustomed to flying high above the clouds, lounging on a plush leather seat. This would be a new experience.
Though the box offered the potential of freedom, it also represented abject desperation.
Worse than his humiliation would be his inevitable destination: straight to jail, again, but this time with no chance at bail.
Still, staying and arguing his way through the morass of the Japanese courts seemed a far devastating fate. He had been locked away in their system for more than a hundred days, enduring daily interrogations by prosecutors during which he was not allowed a lawyer.
He was facing serious criminal charges, having been accused of orchestrating a complex flow of money between Nissan, the Middle East, and his own pocket. Beyond the criminal charges, his carefully honed image had been ripped to shreds as Nissan and Tokyo prosecutors had steadily leaked damaging bits of information, ensuring that Ghosn-as-villain had been front-page fodder for months.
He was facing a lengthy legal battle, and he wasn’t sure he’d live long enough to survive the ordeal. Even if he funneled all his resources and contacts into his day in court, he knew that in Japan prosecutors won over 99 percent of trials.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, he had started to take matters into his own hands, exploring numerous schemes to secretly pay himself what he thought he was worth. Ten years later, he had been ready to push through his last great act as an executive — a merger between the French and Japanese carmakers — before sailing off into the sunset aboard a 120-foot-long yacht. As part of the deal, he would be entitled to a massive payday, one that would enable him to retire as a very wealthy man.
By Ghosn’s account, a plotting group of Nissan executives had prevented that by conspiring to orchestrate his downfall. His careful plans had been thwarted by a dramatic, unexpected arrest. His supporters had evaporated at an alarming rate. His friends in Davos would neither protect nor defend him.
He had given Nissan, in particular, so very much. The prior year, Hiroto Saikawa, Ghosn’s handpicked successor, had unveiled a stainless-steel statue more than sixteen feet tall for Nissan dubbed Wheels of Innovation, which Saikawa called “a retrospective on Mr. Ghosn’s 17 years of leadership.” On the night of his mentor’s arrest, that same man told the world that Ghosn had abused his position to line his own pockets.
Stripped of the trappings of corporate power, Ghosn had been reduced to a presumed criminal before the law, a status he deeply resented. He was not going to admit defeat so easily. And he had more than his own name and integrity to protect. The Ghosn family had made its fortune far from its native Beirut, spanning back two generations and originating in the Amazonian rainforest. Carlos Ghosn was the clan’s greatest scion. To end his storied life in ignominy would be failing the legacy of his grandfather and tarnishing the reputation of his children. He would rather risk his life than accept such a fate.
Back in the hotel with Taylor, from the corner room on the forty-sixth floor, large windows offered a view of the vast Pacific, partially framed by the twinkling lights of Osaka. It seemed less as though he was on top of the world and more as though he was teetering on the edge of it. He climbed into the box.
“Breathe slowly,” Taylor reminded him as he lowered the lid. Then everything went dark.
Nick Kostov and Sean McLain are reporters for The Wall Street Journal.
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