＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
1. Former Chairman Ghosn arrested for misappropriating company assets
Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has been arrested on suspicion of violating the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act.
Ghosn is alleged to have misstated his own executive compensation in “securities reports” (i.e., “understatement of executive compensation”) by listing less than the actual amount in the reports. He reportedly stated approximately 5 billion yen less during the five-year period from 2011 to 2015, but subsequent investigations revealed that he had fudged another 3 billion yen.
In addition, Nissan had its overseas subsidiaries buy luxury houses in Brazil, France, Lebanon, and the Netherlands with the money of the overseas subsidiaries, which Ghosn’s sister (in Brazil) and himself used free of charge (“misappropriation of investment funds”), In addition, the suspect had signed an “advisory contract” (“misappropriation of expenses”) with Ghosn’s sister, who had no actual business activities, and had paid Nissan $100,000 annually since 2002.
It is also suspected that Ghosn himself had transferred 1.7 billion yen in losses from his private investments to Nissan.
As a Japanese citizen, I would like to see a thorough investigation by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office against the suspect Ghosn, who “privatized and preyed on the company.
2. he was not a “charismatic manager” but an “insider who harms the organization”
Ghosn was appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) after Renault acquired 36.8% of Nissan’s shares in 1999 when the company was in financial trouble and formed a capital alliance with the company. In 2001, he was promoted to Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
He was hailed as a “charismatic manager” for his “Nissan Revival Plan,” a restructuring measure that led to a V-shaped recovery of Nissan’s business, despite being called a “cost cutter” for closing its main plants and cutting personnel on a massive scale.
3. Plea Bargaining
However, the whistleblowing revealed that ex-Chairman Ghosn was taking advantage of Nissan’s weakness in the face of the financial crisis to damage the company for his own benefit.
The “plea bargain” system, which was introduced in Japan in 2016, played a major role in this “whistleblowing”.
A “plea bargain” is “a deal between a defendant and a prosecutor at trial whereby the defendant pleads guilty or charges an accomplice in court or cooperates in an investigation, thereby reducing the sentence sought or dropping some charges.”
This is a system that has been in place in the United States for a long time, and I have seen it on TV dramas and other media.
It is often said that “power always corrupts,” but in Ghosn’s case, I believe the malignancy of the suspect is very high, as he has acted to damage the company for his own benefit from the beginning.
The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Motors alliance is now structured in such a way that a weakened Renault is sucking up the profits of a revived Nissan, so it seems inevitable that Nissan will take the arrest of Ghosn as an opportunity to review the alliance.
This is the second case of “plea bargaining” in Japan, and it seems to me that the effectiveness of “plea bargaining” has been successfully proven. I have a feeling that similar cases will appear in the future using “plea bargaining.