Obviously you masterminded this incredible escape out of japan, worthy of a movie how did you do it . Well, i did myself. Obviously it was with the help of some people that i got to know but as you know, im not going to expose them and im not going to take any risk, these people who have really dared to give me help into how to leave japan without creating any trouble, which was the case. Tell me, youre stuck in a box for several hours, right, breathing through air holes . What is that like . Im not going to confirm or say anything i can tell you what its obviously you know, you have a lot of anxiety when you are in a period where you are transferring out of the country but you are not still out of reach. But when you go through an experience like mine, where ive been arrested in 19 of november, 2018, and been through very, very tough times with a lot of adventure, i would say, youre numb somehow your ability to feel the situation in which you are is diminished, because you protect yourself by numbing yourself so i would say that it would be fair to say that between november 19, 2018, up to 30 of december, 2019 when i arrived to beruit, i thought i was in a completely different way, i was feeling completely different and somehow i am reborn sips i arrived here so when you tell me what were your emotion, yes, i had some emotion, but somehow they were diminished compared to what im feeling now. And when you got out and finally got to lebanon its a rebirth. The first face i seen was the face of my wife in the house of her parents. I cant tell you the joy i had to just be simply with her after spending nine month of not being able to talk to her, not being able to see her. There was absolutely no end in sight for this kind of ridiculous ban that they put on me it has a special taste so in a certain way it helps you put back priority in your life about the people who are the most important, what you should be doing im a different man today. How much did it cost . Ive seen a lot of numbers circulating in the press i think they are very, very generous in general. Too high . Yeah. So thats what i can tell you. I dont think you need this kind of money to be able to organize, obviously the simpler it is, the better it is, the more chance you have to be successful, and the more discrete you will be. You probably dont realize this because youre not in the United States, but you may have just walked into what is a huge controversy in the United States, about bail reform, about the poor not being able to pay bail but the rich being able to do so and the Justice System is inherently better for the rich what would you say to people unfortunately for me i didnt have this problem in the United States, because if this was in the United States, you have a rule of law and you have an established justice well, i benefit from that in japan so i dont think somehow i had the feeling in japan that because you have a reputation to be powerful and rich, things are going to be applied to you in a much more rigorous way to prove that justice is the same for everybody. So ive been through a period of time where somehow everybody, talking to me, they say just like anybody else. So somehow instead of being above the law, you start to feel like you are below the law people want to implement for you things that usually they would not implement for regular people just because they feel bad about looking like theyre helping somebody who is rich, et cetera. So im not talking about the United States. But there are some countries where you have to be careful that in a certain way you dont create a situation where people, because they have some advantage of situation for whatever reasons, theyre being treated in a different way than normal people. Any regrets about greg kelly, your subordinate, your codefendant who is still there greg is a great person. If he is where he is, hes an honorable person im sure he refused a plea bargain that would have put him out, but that would mean that he would have to Say Something different from his own conviction. Did you try to help him get out . Did you think about trying to get him at the same time i couldnt contact him. I was for bidden with any contact from greg. Even he was in tokyo while i was in tokyo, we were totally foref forefor bidden, no contact whatsoever. Lets talk about the charges against you. Youre not going to face them in jap. But people in the United States could see there is an sec settlement from last year where you paid 1 million, nissan paid 15 million to settle charges about you hiding compensation. And when you read that, the accusations against you, it sounds like you were trying to defer a lot of payment until retirement is that true is that what was happening no, i was not deferring anything when you defer, that means you acquired something and i didnt acquire anything the situation, we tried to explain, and frankly, the fact that we had an agreement with the sec is no admit and no denial and they signed it. In japan you cannot open two front at the same time its too much. But in fact, i didnt acquire anything, because the socalled deferred compensation was not signed by the board, but not signed by any representative director it was kind of a memo to myself with the help of somebody to keep track of the difference between my compensation as a ceo of nissan and the average compensation of the ceo of a similar company, followed by you know, we have the report, the general report about compensation thats it. Thats the document which has been used by the prosecutor to say, oh, you are hiding compensation that should be paid to you it was not fixed, it was not decided and it was not paid. So there is no reason for the whole thing. And i can tell you that and again, i shouldnt talk about the case in the United States because when i signed the agreement, no denial and no acceptance. When i read it, though, it sounds like the reason you didnt get the money is because you hadnt retired yet so when you say you never got the money, you werent supposed to get it until down the road. Well, after you retire the person deciding on compensation is on your board and youre not part by definition, if youre retired youre not part of the board so how can you say that it is decided if the people who have to pronounce on these compensation are unknown because after you retire, you dont know who is managing the company and member of the board, and so how can you report a compensation which has not been defined, because we dont know exactly what was the amount, has not been decided because the people who were going to decide on the compensation will come in many years to come it doesnt make sense. Im going to tell you one thing. We went to the professor in terms of corporate law, university of tokyo. Its a kind of Harvard Law School of japan. We give him all the facts. You know what the professor said he said its a shame for japan that carlos ghosn was arrested for this thats what he said. So were waiting for him to make the statement. But thats why im saying this is a plot, because youve been arrested for this, you went to prison for this without any prior notice i understood that i would sit down with somebody and this memo, nothing like this. Went to prison and then the investigation started. Youve used the word plot and conspiracy against you why would they want to do something to you well, i explained two reasons. First reason is a decline of the performance of nissan when i started to be extremely frustrated with the management, that in fact i put in place. He was nervous about his job, because me representing with 43 of the shareholders, i had the power to remove him from the job at any moment, which was justified because the performance was declining. The second reason, there is a lot of people who really did not like the kind of mergen with renault. And as long as i was heading the alliance, they trusted that i would protect the autonomy of nissan and i would protect them from the fact that the french government wanted to interfere in the business, which the japanese did not like at all but they said why do we have to wait for this guy . Why dont we get rid of this guy . If we get rid of him, we get rid of the inference and they were right. Youre saying that the desire to keep nissan as a National Champion was so strong, they were willing to destroy you and your reputation . Without any doubt look what theyve done look at the statements that were made after i was arrested. Look at the corporation, the prosecutor and the nissan, the support from the japanese government the whole thing doesnt make sense. For me, it was obvious and they got what they wanted, except that nissan today is run into the ground. This is the only thing they didnt think about, is will people be able to run the company . And the answer so far, after 14 months, is answer the no because the companys profit is going down, the growth has completely disappeared, the market of nissan went down by more than 10 billion. Everything is going down. If people were to read all the press reports, payments to aman, a situation wi, they coul the impression that due to poor bookkeeping, there was commingling of corporate with your personal finances. Everything was built in order to let you think that. Nissan has a good case with the help of people who were specialists of these kind of things and they built an image and they attacked through legal and they attacked through the media it was very well done in a certain way. So a lot of people think, okay, this guy is shady, hes doing all of these things. And while i was in prison, i couldnt defend myself and everything was done for me not to be able to talk when i wanted to make a press conference in tokyo, i came back to prison 24 hours after they came with new chanchlrges, immediately. And when the new prosecutor was named and the press in japan was complaining to the prosecutor, why do you for bid ghosn is talk to the press im not for bidding him, he can talk to the press. But at the same time as hes free to talk to the press, we are free to bring new charges, which was a thinly veiled threat that if you open your mouth, youre going to go back. So i want to end all of this i want to be able to speak, i want to be able to defend myself i want a Justice System where attack and defense have the same rights and its balanced and let the truth happen i was in a system where its not about the truth, its about winning, its about confession, its about i think youre guilty, so im going to prove your guilty. I dont care about the truth im going to select all the things that are favorable to my theory and Everything Else im going to reject it. Prosecutors do that in the United States, too, generally, though, dont they i think prosecutor everywhere in the world do it but there is a limit to that and then you have a limit of power. I think in the United States, the judge is the real boss, while in japan in my opinion is not. You have a french passport . Yes french citizenship . Yes they dont extradite . No. Are you going to travel to france at all . Maybe, yes. I just arrived here, but im going to see with my lawyers what is the situation. I have the same bring with brazil i have a brazilian passport. Thats enough to have free citizenship and i am citizen of three countries who dont extradite their citizens. What if you have to spend the rest of your life in lebanon, though are you ready for that well, its better than spending the rest of my life in japan. Thats unfortunately the perspective that i was seeing. Because i didnt have even a date for my trial. A speedy trial is one of the basic elements or rights of any human being. Ive been arrested in november 19, we were in december 14 months later, i didnt have a date for the trial and then, you know, because the charges are different, there were going to be two trials. So we didnt even have a date for the first trial. So i was looking at this and saying this is going to take four or five years, because you have the trial and then the appeal and then after the appeal the Supreme Court and its very slow on top of this, the trials are in japanese. We asked, for example, and greg had the same request, we couldnt understand anything from the translator. They refused. They wouldnt give you a translator. No, there was a translator but we said we dont understand the translator we asked to change the translator because we dont understand the translator. They refused its refused we asked for a translation because a lot of the debate took place took 20 minutes, then the judge would make a summery in 30 seconds. I would love to follow what happened in the 20 minutes and then he would say to the translator to translate and then the translator would Say Something difficult to understand so the whole thing didnt make any sense. We were not here with the willingness to make us participate to our own trial we were here with some rules okay, we need a translator, wer is a translator. We dont understand, we dont care, this is it simultaneous translation, they have never done it. Anything i should have asked you or you expected me to ask you . No, i think the only thing i want to tell you, that a lot of people perceive that i am running from justice, which is really the last thing. If i had some reassurance that i would get a fair trial in japan and if my wife could have joined me in japan, i would have stayed because this is the place i should have my name and reputation they cut me from my wife and i dont get to see her again, plus i am facing a 99. 4 conviction rate, which is a haunting number i was very anxious about the future, yes, i was i was very anxious. Thank you for your time thank you michelle joins us from beirut michelle, fantastic interview. He spoke there at the start of the interview about feeling a sense of rebirth i would say it came across as more than that he felt very calm, very confident, very composed do you get the feeling he thinks that this escape from japan means for the rest of his life now he is in the clear oh, certainly from japan, absolutely whether or not hes going to be able to clear his name in the court of Public Opinion, that were going to have to see youve got to think about he did this interview after he did already previous to that a two and a half hour News Conference with more than 100 members of international press, which he did in english, in arabic, in french, in portuguese with documents that he said demonstrated his innocence against the allegations that have been alleged against him in japan, and suggestions that have come out of france as well what also remains to be seen is just how much of a spotlight remains on the japanese legal system as he goes on this big tour to try to clear his name. Its going to highlight the fact that things are very different in japan, say, than they are in the United States, where you can be detained without being arrested, where you can be questioned for hours without your attorney being there. You dont have the right to remain silent. Theres no miranda rights that we know of in the United States. And theres been lots of criticisms about japan, about whether theyre going to change that and well see if anything changes because of this. But they remain defensive about the way they process their defendants there michelle, great work. I thought his comments about nissan now being run into the ground were interesting. And also when you asked him about whether he would potentially go to france, one has got to wonder what happens in the alliance on precarious grounds, especially if he does go to france. It seems almost dead at this point. He had tried to orchestrate a large Holding Company but japan wanted nothing to do with it and align that with the fact that the french government can be interventionists, and you need a very, very strong and dominant personality to hold the thing together and, remember, hes also facing issues perhaps with renault in france, so its not clear that he could go back to fixing this at this point. Michelle, i think your point about the japanese legal system have been certainly eyeopening for all of us over the last year, and the 99 conviction rate, perhaps the chief point among that that said, if he takes a role as a Senior Executive at a japanese company, he should be aware of what the legal rules and system are if he were potentially be seen to break any of the rules i also wanted to ask, michelle, what you felt in terms of your point, will he clear his name in the court of Public Opinion, in the News Conference earlier did the questioning suggest that people were on his side or against him . And you mentioned the different languages and nashalittionaliti there. Any things you took away from that that was extremely interesting to be in the News Conference and to see all the different nationalities asking questions, and he was very pointed that he wanted to make sure that every nationality represented got a question and at times he would say things like that is such an italian question, and he was right so the japanese questioners were tougher. There were the English Press that asked a lot about the conspiracy that he talked about. The lebanese press questioned him about shaking hands with leadership of israel and why would he shake the hands of someone who has the blood of the lebanese people on his hand. So that goes right to the heart of all the geopolitics happening here in lebanon. When we hear about the white house talking about the proxy wars happening and malitias across the world, thats right here in lebanon. At one point a french reporter asked why didnt you go to france she was clearly insulted that he came to lebanon instead. It was incredibly interesting to watch. Whether hes really going to solve it in the court of Public Opinion, i think hes got to get more precise answering questions related to the settlement with the sec and whether there was commingling of finances to get a little tighter on that, to be clear about it michelle, thank you so much great work safe travels back. Josh, quick question to you, whats your reaction to that extraordinary interview and the press conference this morning. This is like history in the making this could totally be a movie. He denied a