Japan convicts Greg Kelly over helping ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn hide income
- A Tokyo court sentenced the former Ghosn aide to a six-month sentence in prison suspended for three years
- The ruling means that Kelly, an American citizen, may be able to leave Japan for the first time since his arrest in 2018
Prosecutors had sought two years in prison for Kelly, accusing him of helping Ghosn under-report his income to the tune of 9.1 billion yen (US$79 million) between 2010 and 2018.
But the court found him not guilty on the charges for the financial years 2010 to 2016, and guilty for the financial year 2017, handing down a six-month prison sentence suspended for three years. Kelly’s lawyers said they will appeal the verdict.
Kelly’s team argued the proposed post-retirement payments were never agreed and there were merely exploratory discussions about a “legal way” to keep Ghosn in the fold after his tenure and prevent him from joining a competitor.
But judge Kenji Shimizu ruled that by financial year 2017 Kelly “was aware that there was an unpaid remuneration and the court recognises that there was a conspiracy (between Kelly) with Ghosn and (Nissan executive Toshiaki) Ohnuma.”
Some have viewed Kelly as little more than a scapegoat in a case that centred around Ghosn, whose audacious escape hidden in an audio-equipment box in December 2019 left Japanese prosecutors red-faced.
“Kelly was arrested with the expectation that he could be ‘turned’ to testify against Ghosn,” said Stephen Givens, a business lawyer in Tokyo who has followed the case.
“When Ghosn escaped to Beirut, the prosecutors were left with a weak, free-standing case against Kelly,” he said.
Nissan had pleaded guilty in a separate case, and was ordered on Thursday to pay a fine of 200 million yen (US$1.7 million).
Kelly has been in Japan since his detention in 2018 and has been joined in Tokyo by his wife, who had to enrol in Japanese lessons to secure a visa to stay in the country.
The verdict does mean he should now be able to leave Japan for the first time in three years, which was welcomed by US ambassador to Tokyo Rahm Emanuel.
“We are relieved that the legal process has concluded, and Mr and Mrs Kelly can return home,” he said in a statement.
“While this has been a long three years for the Kelly family, this chapter has come to an end,” he added, offering no comment on the guilty verdict itself.
Japanese prosecutors have a close to 99 per cent conviction rate in cases that go to trial, though experts said the outcome in Kelly’s case was hard to predict because it was the first of its kind in the country.
For his part, Ghosn, who faced several additional financial misconduct charges, has always insisted he and Kelly are innocent and that Japanese prosecutors worked to help Nissan push him out in a “palace coup”.
“If he’s guilty, many Japanese should also be in prison,” he said from Beirut during an online press conference in December.