Japan Lawyers Who Won Ghosn’s Bail Quit After Client Escapes
Carlos Ghosn’s Legal Team in Japan Resigns, Broadcaster NHK Says
(Bloomberg) -- Carlos Ghosn’s lawyer, one of the most respected criminal-defense attorneys in Japan, has formally resigned after his client fled the country at the end of December to escape trial.
Junichiro Hironaka, whose nickname is “The Razor” and who led the legal team representing the former chairman and chief executive of Nissan Motor Co., notified the Tokyo District Court on Thursday that he is no longer representing Ghosn, his office said in a statement. Hironaka had already signaled his intention to resign last week.
Arrested in November 2018, Ghosn and former Nissan executive Greg Kelly — who both deny wrongdoing — were set to stand trial this year. That’s now looking unlikely without the main defendant, thrusting the conflict into the public arena and possibly the Lebanese courts. With an Interpol red notice and revocation of his bail, Ghosn is unlikely to ever set foot in Japan again.
All of the lawyers in Hironaka’s practice resigned, as did Takashi Takano, another well-known attorney who worked with Hironaka and helped arrange bail for Ghosn. Hiroshi Kawatsu, another lawyer who was part of the defense and was the main attorney registered with the court, will continue to represent Ghosn for the time being, the Asahi newspaper reported. Ghosn hired the new Japanese team in February after firing his first defense team. Ghosn was represented in the U.S. by Paul, Weiss.
Separately, the court decided on Thursday to try Kelly separately in Ghosn’s absence, Kyodo News reported. That effectively leaves the American at the center of the criminal case and a proxy for Ghosn’s innocence or guilt in the first set of charges against him. The two were arrested on the same day; Kelly remains in Japan to face charges that allege he helped understate Ghosn’s compensation by tens of millions of dollars.
It wasn’t clear whether Nissan, which has also been charged for being involved in underreporting Ghosn’s income, will be prosecuted. Japanese prosecutors have continued to push the case domestically, issuing an arrest warrant for Ghosn’s wife Carole earlier this month.
Ghosn, arrested in November 2018, had been free on bail as he awaited a trial that was scheduled to start this year, but made a dramatic escape last month and fled to Lebanon. He has denied all of the charges, saying they were part of a conspiracy to prevent further integration between Nissan and Renault SA.
Since Ghosn’s escape, his legal team in Japan came under scrutiny and criticism for the events leading to his departure. Hironaka, speaking just a few hours after Ghosn announced he was in Lebanon on Dec. 31, said his office held all of Ghosn’s passports. He later confirmed that one was returned to Ghosn’s person last year in a locked case to which the legal team held the key.
Hironaka is best known for successfully defending Atsuko Muraki, a former senior bureaucrat, charged in 2009 with falsely certifying an organization as representing disabled people so it could use cheaper postage rates. Takano, meanwhile, had represented a member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult behind the 1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo.
The exiting team of lawyers was brought on to represent Ghosn in February 2019, after he fired his first attorney Motonari Otsuru, an ex-prosecutor. The new legal team was able to secure bail for Ghosn after offering seemingly strict conditions such as camera monitoring and restricted internet use.
Following Ghosn’s escape, some in the Japanese legal community have expressed sympathy for the defense team.
“His legal defense team has worked for years to gain the trust of the courts and that trust was also a factor in Ghosn getting bail,” said Nobuko Otsuki, a defense lawyer in Tokyo not connected with the case. “It must be a disgrace that this happened and I sympathize with them.”
--With assistance from Isabel Reynolds and Yuji Okada.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Du in Tokyo at ldu31@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net, Reed Stevenson, Gearoid Reidy
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