Documents Show Ghosn’s Deferred Pay Was “Fixed”

December 18, 2018

Tokyo--Secret documents state that pay for former Nissan Motor Co. <7201> Chairman Carlos Ghosn that was to be deferred until his retirement was "fixed," contrary to his claim, investigative sources said Tuesday.

The documents were signed by Ghosn and the then chief of the secretary's office at Nissan, according to the sources.

The special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office regards the documents as evidence that pay delayed until his retirement had been already determined, and believes that he had an obligation to state it in Nissan's financial statements, the sources said.

Ghosn did not report the deferred pay in the Japanese automaker's financial statements.

According to the sources, the documents include the words of "Fixed Remuneration," "Paid Remuneration" and "Postponed Remuneration" in English, in relation to Ghosn's total annual pay. In addition, the word of "determined" was found in the documents, the sources said.

The documents were secretly kept at the secretary's office. The special investigation squad is believed to have obtained them from the chief of the office through plea bargaining.

Ghosn and his close aide Greg Kelly, former representative director of Nissan, were indicted earlier this month by the special investigation squad for allegedly hiding more than 4.8 billion yen of Ghosn's pay over the five years from fiscal 2010, in violation of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.

At the same time, they served a fresh arrest warrant on Ghosn for allegedly failing to report over 4.2 billion yen in pay over the past three years through fiscal 2017.

Ghosn denied the allegations, claiming that there had been no guarantee of the next chief executive officer of Nissan paying him the amounts after his retirement and that the amount of deterred pay had not been fixed. He had thus had no obligation to report the pay in financial statements, he said. Jiji Press