Carlos Ghosn to Stay in Jail After Tokyo Court Denies Bail Again
Carlos Ghosn Declares His Innocence and Is Denied Bail in Japan. That'south a Pattern.
TOKYO — After Bernard L. Madoff, arguably the most notorious financial criminal of all time, was arrested for defrauding investors in a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, he was released on $10 1000000 in bail the same day. Until his trial months later, he lived and slept in his Manhattan penthouse.
Carlos Ghosn, the global auto chieftain indicted on charges of financial wrongdoing in Japan, tin only imagine such freedom. Final week, a Tokyo court denied his lawyers' bail request for the 2d time in a single week. He remains consigned to a small cell inside the hulking gray jail where he has been since his arrest in November.
Mr. Ghosn, 64, who until recently helmed a global car-making empire that united Nissan and Mitsubishi of Nippon and Renault of French republic, has been indicted on charges that he underreported his income past more than $lxxx million for years and temporarily transferred personal investment losses to Nissan while he was chairman and chief executive.
His lawyers accept said Mr. Ghosn, who denies all allegations, could remain in custody for months. In the most contempo court decision, he was denied bail even later he promised to surrender his passports, rent an apartment in Tokyo and pay personally for an talocrural joint bracelet and individual security guards.
Mr. Ghosn'south predicament has turned a laser focus on the Japanese criminal justice system. Westerners — and particularly foreign businesses — are incredulous over the power that prosecutors have wielded. The lawyers can detain defendants for more than three weeks before bringing charges, arrest suspects multiple times to extend their detention and interrogate them without their counsel.
"That is exactly what Kafka was writing almost in his novels well-nigh dystopian societies," said Phil Telfeyan, executive manager of Equal Justice Under Police, an American advocacy grouping. "That is really far beyond what we would expect from a society that offers due process rights."
In an open letter to the Japanese authorities published in the daily Le Monde last week, a group of fifty French lawyers rallied backside Mr. Ghosn. Every bit the head of Renault, Mr. Ghosn was responsible for a car company that employs tens of thousands of workers. The lawyers bluntly defendant Tokyo prosecutors of trying to obtain "forced confessions." By keeping Mr. Ghosn in jail for ii months, they said, prosecutors were trying to "weaken his defenses."
Another French daily, Liberation, ran an editorial headlined: "This is not how it should work in a healthy society!" This weekend, President Emmanuel Macron of France told reporters that he had expressed concern to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Nihon about the "very long" and "harsh" atmospheric condition of Mr. Ghosn's detention.
In the Diplomat, an online magazine published in Tokyo, Brad Adams, Asia director for the advocacy group Human Rights Scout, criticized Japan for the practice of questioning defendants without their lawyers and of extending detentions, week later calendar week. "This is an approach to the rights of accused people that one would expect in a dictatorship, not in Japan," he wrote.
Prototype
Former detainees have described jail conditions in Japan, where they are locked in cells of about 160 square anxiety, with tatami mats on the floor and toilets in the corner. They are immune 30 minutes of exercise, 3 days a calendar week, and eat meals with rice and miso soup. When Mr. Ghosn appeared in court — to ask for an explanation of why he was being held as well as to declare his innocence — the one time robust executive was sallow-cheeked and thin.
Mr. Ghosn resigned from Renault after the court's latest refusal to grant bail. Renault had said it has seen no prove of financial misconduct past Mr. Ghosn, but the carmaker was eager to resolve weeks of strained relations with Nissan and Mitsubishi.
Mr. Ghosn signed the letter of resignation, catastrophe a about 20-yr career, from his cell.
The bail decision has spurred outrage. In an interview, Mr. Adams noted that Japan is a signatory to a United Nations treaty that states in criminal proceedings "information technology shall not be the full general rule that persons pending trial shall be detained in custody."
Well-nigh a quarter of defendants in Nippon were released on bond before trial in 2015, according to the latest data from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations. Among those who assert their innocence, the bail charge per unit roughshod; one in about 13 defendants was granted bail.
Legal experts say prosecutors rely on a clause in Nihon'southward Constitution that permits courts to deny bail if they deem suspects at risk to tamper with evidence. A defendant who claims innocence is "well-nigh automatically deemed a accused of some probable cause to hamper evidence," said Takashi Takano, a criminal defence force lawyer in Tokyo.
When Mr. Ghosn appeared in court, the approximate told the millionaire that he was being held because he was a flight chance and might conceal testify. (Greg Kelly, Mr. Ghosn's shut aide and a Nissan board manager who has faced accusations in the same inquiry, was freed on bond on Christmas Day.)
In the United States, suspects who are not charged within 48 hours must be released. "From the moment you are arrested you are given a bond amount," Mr. Telfeyan said. "And if you can beget it, yous are costless within moments of your arrest."
A notable exception in the The states — and a criticism — is that there is an income disparity in its justice system. The Madoff arrest in 2008 is an example: Wealthy defendants have the means to avoid detention. Low-income defendants ofttimes face a fate like to Mr. Ghosn'due south. Co-ordinate to data from the Prison Policy Initiative, concluding year most 536,000 people sabbatum in jail on any given day in the U.s.a., simply because they could not afford bond.
And in France, where suspects are by and large held in jail for a maximum of two days subsequently beingness charged, suspects — peculiarly foreigners — can be kept in custody if judges rule in that location is a gamble they could flee the country. In some cases, people have been detained up to 12 months.
Japanese critics of their state'due south justice organisation say prosecutors desire bail to be denied so they tin can vesture downward defendants. They are, for all applied purposes, seeking confessions. Close to ninety percent of suspects who are indicted do confess, according to Bar Association data. If they confess, they are more likely to exist granted bail.
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"If you deny the charges, yous volition be detained for a very long time," Mr. Takano said. "This message is very clear." He said some defence force lawyers brash clients to confess simply to "get it over with."
Japanese courts tend to translate the notion of prove tampering broadly. In Mr. Ghosn's case, experts said the court might have been concerned that, once free, he could pressure onetime subordinates.
"The court nonetheless considers him a person of slap-up influence" who could pull strings at Nissan, said Yasuyuki Takai, a prosecutor turned defence force lawyer who advised Takafumi Horie, an cyberspace tycoon who was constitute guilty of violating securities laws a decade ago.
On Mon, Nissan confirmed that it had received an enquiry, after the arrest of Mr. Ghosn, from the Securities and Substitution Commission. Nissan would not elaborate but said it was cooperating fully. Nissan was indicted by Tokyo prosecutors for its role in Mr. Ghosn's financial filings.
Speaking to reporters concluding calendar week, Shin Kukimoto, deputy chief prosecutor at the Tokyo District Prosecutors' Role, declined to requite much rationale for Mr. Ghosn's detention; he said Japanese courts did not unremarkably apply ankle bracelets for bailed defendants.
Some people who accept been detained in Japan have reported surreal interrogations.
Atsuko Muraki, a former top welfare ministry building bureaucrat who was arrested for postal fraud and exonerated later a key witness retracted his testimony, spent five months in detention in 2009. In her memoir, she said a prosecutor had repeatedly tried to make her sign a statement with simulated quotes attributed to her.
"I never said that, then I cannot sign this," Ms. Muraki recollected. The prosecutor told her that such fabrications were typical and that "at that place may exist some exaggerations."
The logic behind denying counsel is simple, as 1 judge described it. Prosecutors "do not want to be in the same room with a doubtable's lawyer because that is the prosecutor'southward enemy," said Hiroshi Segi, a former Tokyo District Court judge. "They don't desire to conduct their business concern while their enemy is present."
Mr. Ghosn'due south married woman has appealed to Man Rights Watch to petition the Japanese government for his release. The advocacy group has demurred, pointing out that the Ghosn case should "make Japanese lawmakers rethink their system" but that his case is not an outlier.
Poor suspects without access to media or loftier-priced lawyers endure the same treatment, said Mr. Adams of Human Rights Watch. "Of course nosotros are concerned about his rights," he said, "only we're really concerned nearly the people unknown and never to exist known."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/business/carlos-ghosn-japan.html
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