A Tokyo court has sentenced Greg Kelly, a former assistant to Carlos Ghosn at Nissan, to a suspended six-month prison sentence after convicting him of embezzlement.
The Public Prosecution had requested a two-year prison sentence with entry into force for this former senior legal official in Nissan, after accusing him of helping Ghosn conceal incomes of 9.1 billion yen (about 70 million euros) that the company intended to pay later to its manager at the time, without knowing about it. Japanese tax authorities.
Kelly pleaded not guilty of all charges against him, stressing that the compensation that Nissan intended to pay to Ghosn for the period between 2010 and 2018 had not been settled, neither in terms of its value, nor in terms of how it was paid, nor in terms of the timetable for its payment, and therefore Nissan was not legally obligated to inform the Japanese authorities. regarding it.
The Japanese authorities arrested Ghosn and Kelly on the same day in November 2018, then released them on bail pending trial. Both have pleaded not guilty since the case began.
But Ghosn fled Japan at the end of 2019, and is wanted under an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol, but since his escape from Japan, he has since lived in Lebanon.