French prosecutors have issued an international arrest warrant for car tycoon Carlos Ghosn, who fled to Lebanon from Japan in 2019.
Nanterre prosecutors' warrant for the former head of Nissan and Renault is based on an investigation into money laundering and abuse of company assets, reportedly over millions in allegedly suspect payments made between the Renault-Nissan alliance and Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA).
SBA is a vehicle distributor company in Oman owned by billionaire Suhail Bahwan.
The Nanterre prosecutors' office described the move as the next step in a two-year investigation, one of two separate cases involving Ghosn in France focusing on payments made to SBA.
The former head of the Nissan-Renault alliance fled to Lebanon in late 2019, while he was on bail as he faced financial misconduct charges in Japan.
In an interview last year with The Associated Press, Ghosn was confident and determined to fight to restore his reputation.
A statement sent to the Associated Press on Friday from his PR team called the French warrant "surprising".
"This is not an arrest warrant issued by France but by the Nanterre prosecutor's office in an investigation still in progress," it said.
The statement also suggested that the warrant was ineffective as Ghosn "is subject to a judicial ban on leaving Lebanese territory", where he currently resides.
Lebanon does not extradite its citizens. Ghosn has citizenship in Lebanon, France and Brazil.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here