France has issued an international arrest warrant for Carlos Gon, a disgraced former Nissan CEO who jumped on bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon, prosecutors said.
The order was issued on Thursday for 15 million euros (12.6 million British pounds) in suspicious payments between the Renault-Nissan alliance, which Gon once headed, and the Omani company Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA), said prosecutors in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.
Charges include misappropriation of company assets, money laundering and corruption.
Gon, then head of Nissan and head of an alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, was detained in Japan in November 2018 on suspicion of financial misconduct, along with his chief aide Greg Kelly. Both denied wrongdoing.
In December 2019, while awaiting trial, Gon organized a daring escape, being taken out of Japan in a suitcase for audio equipment on a private plane.
Gon, who holds French, Lebanese and Brazilian passports, landed in Beirut, which has no extradition treaty with Japan.
The 68-year-old said he fled because he did not believe he would get a fair trial in Japan, where prosecutors have almost 99 percent convictions in court cases.
He also accused Nissan of plotting with prosecutors to arrest him because he wanted to deepen the Japanese company’s alliance with Renault.
A statement from his PR team called the French order “surprising”, suggesting it was ineffective as Gon was “subject to a court injunction to leave Lebanese territory”.
Lebanon does not extradite its citizens. Gon has the citizenship of Lebanon, France and Brazil.
The Nanterre judge in charge of the investigation has issued four other arrest warrants against current and former SBA leaders, prosecutors said.
Nanterre authorities visited Beirut twice during their investigation, questioning two witnesses in February after speaking with Gon last year with Paris investigators.
The French investigation focuses on alleged illegal financial interactions with the Renault-Nissan distributor in Oman, payments by a Dutch subsidiary to consultants and lavish parties organized at the Palace of Versailles.
Gonn has been heard as a witness and will have to be in France to be formally charged and gain access to details of the charges he faces.
Meanwhile, his former aide Kelly was sentenced to six months probation by a Tokyo court last month for allegedly helping Gon evade income.
Prosecutors have demanded two years in prison for Kelly, accusing him of helping Gon report his income of 9.1 billion yen (55 million British pounds) between 2010 and 2018. The court found him not guilty of the charges for the financial years 2010 to 2016, and guilty of the financial year 2017.
Gon, who has faced several additional allegations of financial misconduct, has always insisted that he and Kelly are innocent and that Japanese prosecutors have worked to help Nissan push him into a “palace coup.”
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien in February, Gon said he wanted to return to France but could not “for now” due to an Interpol arrest warrant.
“Of course I will go to France the day I can do it,” he said, responding to a “knife blow to the back from the French government and Renault’s board of directors,” which is a civilian party in the case.
French Economy Minister Bruno Le Mer refused to comment on Friday’s arrest warrant, telling BFMTV / RMC: “Let justice do its job.”
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