American Consequences - February 2020

By Dan Ferris

don’t believe any business schools offer a ‘How to Escape From Japan 101’ course... They might want to rethink that. For example, let’s say you become the CEO of a big car company in Japan... get anointed as a hero for saving it...

then get arrested on charges you deny have any substance... believe you’re the victim of a corrupt system... leaving you no choice but to sneak out of the country by hiding in a large audio-equipment case so you can be loaded onto a private jet and flown first to Turkey, then to Lebanon... all without being detected by the cops. That business school course would come in handy then! Don’t tell me it can’t happen... because Carlos Ghosn already lived it...

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Ghosn, 65, is the former chief executive of the Nissan-Renault automotive alliance. The alliance is an informal relationship stretching back two decades, with the Japanese and French carmakers each owning a stake in the other. Ghosn was arrested in Japan in November 2018, when prosecutors boarded his plane after it landed at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. He was indicted on two charges of failing to disclose compensation and two charges of using corporate funds for personal gain. Fearing the episode would drag on for years, meaning that he might never leave Japan alive or see his family again, Ghosn wasn’t going to just sit and wait for his punishment... Instead, he cranked up the Mission: Impossible music, hired a team that included a Green Beret ex-convict with experience rescuing hostage victims, and executed an escape that was called “flawless and brilliant” by people he met with while under house arrest in Japan.

American Consequences

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