Beirut judge charges Nissan employees for 'stealing' Ghosn documents

A Lebanese judge has charged four Nissan employees with the theft of documents and devices from the Beirut home and office of the company's former boss Carlos Ghosn, a judicial source said Saturday.

A lawyer for the company told AFP the legal action was "unlawful" and that the company would seek to have the charges thrown out.

The Beirut judge has decided to prosecute "four senior Nissan officials" of Japanese, Spanish, French and British nationalities, accusing them of "committing a number of crimes", the judicial source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authourised to speak to the media.

The "most important" allegation is entering Ghosn's Beirut office and house "against his will and stealing documents, files, electronic devices and accessing his private information system, tampering with its contents and copying data", the source added.

The charges follow a lawsuit filed by Ghosn alleging the "fabrication of evidence that led to his arrest in Japan, and tarnishing his reputation", the source added.

The defendants had been summoned as part of preliminary investigations but failed to appear before the court, the source said.

The case was referred to the first investigating judge in Beirut, requesting "the necessary investigations and the issue of arrest warrants in absentia".

A lawyer for Nissan, Sakher al-Hashem, said the legal action against the four was "unlawful" and predicted the charges would be dropped.

When the investigating judge sets a date for questioning "we will present formal defences demonstrating the legal action is unlawful", he told AFP.

Ghosn, the former chairman and chief executive of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, was arrested in Japan in November 2018 on suspicion of financial misconduct, before being sacked by Nissan's board in a unanimous decision.

He jumped bail late the following year and made a dramatic escape from Japan hidden in an audio-equipment box, landing in Beirut, where he remains an international fugitive.

Ghosn has always denied the charges against him, arguing they were cooked up by Nissan executives who opposed his attempts to more closely integrate the firm with French partner Renault.

Japan and France have sought his arrest, but Lebanon does not extradite its citizens, and judicial authorities have slapped a travel ban on Ghosn, who holds Lebanese, French and Brazilian nationality.

Ghosn last year filed a lawsuit with Lebanon's top prosecutor claiming Nissan fabricated the charges against him in Japan and demanding more than $1 billion in financial compensation, a judicial official said at the time.