Lebanon bans Ghosn from foreign travel

[BEIRUT] Lebanon banned former auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn from travelling on Thursday after questioning him over an Interpol "red notice" of charges of financial misconduct in Japan, judicial sources said.

The 65-year-old businessman - for years venerated in Japan for turning around once-ailing Nissan - fled while awaiting trial on charges including allegedly under-reporting his compensation to the tune of US$85 million.

His shock arrival in his native Lebanon last month was the latest twist in a story worthy of a Hollywood plot and prompted outrage from the Japanese government as well as from Nissan.

"The state prosecution issued a travel ban for Ghosn, and asked for his file from the Japanese authorities," a judicial source told AFP.

A second judicial source said: "He has been banned from travelling until his judicial file arrives from Japan.

"According to what is inside the file, if it appears that the crimes he is accused of in Japan require being pursued in Lebanon, he will be tried," the source added.

"But if it doesn't require being pursued under Lebanese law, then he will be free."

Lebanon's judiciary received a "red notice" from Interpol last week urging Ghosn's arrest.

A "red notice" is a request to police across the world to provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action. It is not an arrest warrant.

Lebanon does not have an extradition agreement with Japan.

Ghosn also made a statement to prosecutors on a report submitted by Lebanese lawyers that he had travelled to neighbouring Israel as head of Renault-Nissan.

Lebanon and neighbouring Israel are still technically at war, and Beirut has forbidden its citizens from visiting or having contacts.

In early 2008, Ghosn travelled to Israel to announce the mass production of electric vehicles there with the cooperation of Renault-Nissan.

At a press conference in Beirut on Wednesday, Ghosn apologised to the Lebanese people for having visited the neighbouring country.

He said he went as the head of Renault.

"I went as a Frenchman because of a contract between Renault and an Israeli company," said Ghosn, who holds French, Lebanese and Brazilian nationalities.

"I always come back to Lebanon and nothing has ever happened before," he said.

Earlier, Japan's Justice Minister Masako Mori responded strongly to Ghosn's highly anticipated media appearance in Beirut.

 Ghosn said  he had been treated "brutally" by Tokyo prosecutors, who he said questioned him for up to eight hours a day without a lawyer present and tried to extract a confession out of him.

In a statement issued shortly after midnight and translated into English and French, Japan's justice minister shot back, repeating that Ghosn's escape from his trial in itself "could constitute a crime".

"Such action would not be condoned under any nation's system," Mrs Mori said. "Furthermore, he has been propagating both within Japan and internationally false information on Japan's legal system and its practice. That is absolutely intolerable."

Nissan Motor Co.'s executives mostly derided the attacks by Ghosn, who lashed out at the automaker he used to lead.

"I don't have time to be dealing with a one-man show by someone who broke the law and escaped justice," said Nissan independent director Masakazu Toyoda, one of the people singled out in a lengthy tirade by the company's former chairman and chief executive officer.

 He also attacked successor-turned-accuser Hiroto Saikawa, who himself had to step down as Nissan's CEO following a scandal over compensation in September.

"If that's all he was going to say, he could have just said it in Japan," Mr Saikawa told reporters outside his home in Tokyo, the morning after Ghosn's news conference. "The real reason he ran away is because he was afraid of being found guilty."

Saikawa was instrumental in Ghosn's arrest and attacked him in a news conference on the day the auto executive was arrested, barely containing his anger over accusations that Ghosn had sought to pay himself more than what was publicly disclosed, and using Nissan's money for his personal gain.

AFP, REUTERS