“I have always acted with integrity and have never been accused of any wrongdoing in my several-decade professional career,” Mr. Ghosn planned to say, according to prepared remarks distributed as a hearing began in Tokyo District Court. “I have been wrongly accused and unfairly detained based on meritless and unsubstantiated accusations.”Mr. Ghosn, who until recently was head of the vast car-making alliance of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi, was arrested in Japan in November on allegations of financial wrongdoing and has been jailed with limited contact to the outside world ever since. On Tuesday, he was led into court handcuffed, with a rope around his waist. He wore plastic slippers and a dark suit without a tie, according to pool reports, and looked thinner than he had in photos taken before his incarceration. He was appearing in a packed courtroom to defend himself against allegations that he improperly transferred personal losses to Nissan’s books and withheld millions of dollars in income from Nissan’s financial filings for years as chairman and chief executive.

Source: New York Times January 08, 2019 02:03 UTC