PARIS – French prosecutors issued an international arrest warrant Friday for Carlos Gon, a former chief executive of Nissan and Renault, who lives as a fugitive from the Japanese judiciary as part of an investigation into alleged misappropriation of corporate assets and money laundering.
The French authorities are interested in nearly 15 million euros (about $ 16.2 million) in alleged payments made between the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi car alliance and its car dealer in Oman, Suhail Bahwan Automobiles or the SBA. They say Mr Gon has abused his position as head of the world’s largest carmaker to channel millions of euros from Renault through the Oman operation for personal use, including the purchase of a 120-foot yacht.
In an interview with French television station BFM late Friday, Mr Gon, looking furious and provocative at his home in Lebanon, denied the allegations and said he “should be presumed innocent”. He added that there was “absolutely no diversion” and that all the money paid to the Omani distributor was “based on confirmed contracts”.
The arrest warrant is one of five issued on Friday against Mr Gon and current owners or former SBA managers, said a spokesman for the French prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, which is conducting the investigation.
Mr Gonn, a former titan of the car industry who holds French and Lebanese passports, has been living as a refugee in Lebanon since 2019, when he fled the world, traveling part of the journey hidden in a box to escape what called “injustice and political persecution” in Japan. Authorities there arrested him in late 2018 on charges of financial misconduct, including lowering his income in order to evade taxes while heading Nissan.
An internal review by Nissan at the time found that between 2011 and 2018, Mr. Gon had authorized more than $ 30 million in discretionary payments to a business partner in Oman. Mr Gon’s representatives insisted that the payments were for business purposes only.
Mr Gon’s flight to Lebanon was strategic: the country has no extradition treaties with Japan or France, which means that the authorities must not comply with their requests for arrest.
France is conducting its own investigation in parallel with Japan, and prosecutors have visited Beirut, the Lebanese capital, twice in the past year to question Mr Gon. He will have to travel to France to be formally charged and gain access to details of the charges against him.
Mr Gonn, who has repeatedly said his arrest was part of a coup by Nissan to force him to leave, said on Friday that he was surprised to learn of the French allegations because he had cooperated with investigators. He added that he “smelled like something fishy” about the time of the arrest warrant, which was issued just two days before the French presidential election.
“There was not a penny from Renault or Nissan that was given to me unfairly, directly or indirectly,” he added.
Mr Gon said he wanted to clear his name and hoped to eventually go to France to “demonstrate the truth” to the judiciary. He, meanwhile, said he teaches at a university in Lebanon and has been involved in helping start-up entrepreneurs.
At the same time, he said, he spends a lot of time working on his legal record, hoping to prove his innocence and writes a book and starred in a film about his life “to restore my reputation and especially to restore the truth.”
In addition to investigating Mr Gon’s relationship with the Oman distributor, French prosecutors are investigating a Dutch corporate company run by Mr Gon, Renault-Nissan BV, which Japanese authorities say he used to fund additional benefits for himself, including acquiring several homes with money from Nissan and organizing a lavish wedding party for himself and his bride in 2016 in Versailles.
Last month, a Japanese court convicted Greg Kelly, a former Nissan former US deputy to Nissan, of helping him conceal some of his compensation from regulators.
A judge sentenced Mr Kelly to six months in prison for his role in evading Mr Gonn’s pay in one fiscal year, but released him from participating in similar efforts during other periods, spanning almost a decade. The sentence was suspended for three years, allowing Mr Kelly to walk free.
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