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The prosecutors accused the American Greg Kelly of having helped Carlos Ghosn to conceal certain remuneration from the Japanese stock market authorities.
Greg Kelly upon his arrival at court in Tokyo on Thursday March 3, 2022.
AFP
Greg Kelly received a six-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday at the end of his trial for financial embezzlement in Tokyo, a first criminal conviction in the Carlos Ghosn case, of which he was an employee at Nissan before his fall.
This sentence is much lighter than the two years in prison that the prosecutors had demanded once morest Greg Kelly. This 65-year-old American lawyer, former head of legal affairs at Nissan, became the main defendant in this trial by default following Carlos Ghosn fled to Lebanon at the end of 2019.
Greg Kelly had pleaded not guilty, while Nissan, also tried in this trial as a legal person, had for its part admitted its guilt. The Japanese car manufacturer was sentenced to a symbolic fine of 200 million yen (1.6 million francs), in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution.
First criminal judgment
The Ghosn affair started in Japan with the sensational arrest in November 2018 of the big boss of the Renault-Nissan alliance, released on bail the following year. Greg Kelly, a former head of legal affairs at Nissan, now 65, was arrested on the same day as Carlos Ghosn and on the same initial charge: failing to report compensation to Japanese stock market authorities that Franco -Lebanese-Brazilian was later to collect from Nissan.
The prosecutors accused him of having helped Carlos Ghosn to conceal from the Japanese stock market authorities 9.1 billion yen (some 70 million francs) of deferred remuneration over the period 2010-2018.
The court found Greg Kelly guilty for these facts, but only on the 2017/18 financial year, considering that he was not previously aware of the “conspiracies” of Carlos Ghosn and another Nissan official in the time, Toshiaki Ohnuma, on these deferred payments. Toshiaki Ohnuma was not prosecuted by Japanese justice, having benefited from whistleblower status.
One month in pre-trial detention
During his trial, the hearings of which spanned nearly a year and a half, Greg Kelly and his lawyers argued that neither the amounts nor the timing of these payments were set in stone, and that therefore Nissan had there is no need to publish this information. Nissan was looking for a “legal way” to keep Carlos Ghosn in its fold following his retirement, to prevent him from joining a competing group, had still assured Greg Kelly.
He had spent a month in pre-trial detention following his arrest in Japan, and had since been living on bail with a ban on leaving Japanese territory pending the end of his trial. His lawyers had assured before the verdict that he would appeal in the event of conviction, even a suspended sentence.
The deferred compensation component was only to be the hors d’oeuvre of the Carlos Ghosn trials in Japan. Because the Japanese justice also wanted to judge the Franco-Lebanese-Brazilian for charges of breach of trust, which this time only targeted him.
(AFP)
