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The Story

Meeting the fugitive CEO: Carlos Ghosn

The Story

The Times

News, In-depth Journalism, News Analysis, Investigative Reporting, Long-form Audio, Exclusive Interviews, Daily News, Daily News Podcast, Audio Storytelling, Current Affairs, Uk News, Global News, Politics

3.91.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn fled house arrest in Tokyo and turned up in Beirut in December 2019, the details read like they’d come straight from the pages of a spy thriller. Accused of financial misconduct by Nissan, and facing a long trial and prison sentence, he decided to make a break for it. What’s his side of the story?


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Guest: John Arlidge, Sunday Times senior business writer.


Host: David Aaronovitch.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Do you remember the story of the Boss in the Box?

0:04.0

He got in the box and the box just went straight through the terminal,

0:07.0

straight onto the conveyor belt and straight into the cargo bay of the private jet.

0:12.0

Carlos Gone, head man of Rello and Nissen,

0:14.8

was under house arrest in Tokyo one day

0:17.4

and beside his pool in Beirut the next,

0:20.3

via the box.

0:30.0

Carlos Gone was kind of the Jose Marino of the car industry. He was brash. he was very talkative he was very successful and then he was very

0:38.6

much in trouble and then Gone was gone.

0:42.5

How did it all happen?

0:44.0

And what's his side of the story?

0:46.0

You're listening to stories of our times from The Times and the Sunday Times.

0:49.5

I'm David Aronovich.

0:51.0

Today, Gone Boy, meeting the fugitive CEO. In late December last year the almost unbelievable story broke of how the Brazilian-born Lebanese

1:15.3

CEO of two of the world's biggest car manufacturers had escaped from detention in Japan

1:21.5

and fled to Lebanon in a box certainly maybe a double base case.

1:27.0

Okay so you're taping now. I'm taping now.

1:34.0

Gowing had been arrested a year earlier on charges of defrauding the company he ran, Nissen.

1:39.0

So John Arledge, an old colleague of mine and a senior business writer for the Sunday Times

1:44.0

recently went to meet him in Beirut to discuss the escape and talk about his new book

1:49.4

in which he argues his innocence of the charges laid against him.

1:53.0

What happened to Carlos Gone at the end of last year?

...

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