Two Americans indicted in car mogul's escape

Tokyo prosecutors on Monday indicted two Americans accused of having helped former Renault-Nissan president Carlos Ghosn flee Japan in 2019 to Lebanon despite being accused of financial embezzlement.

“The special investigative unit (of the Tokyo prosecutor’s office) asked the Tokyo trial court to prosecute the two defendants” in connection with these allegations, prosecutors said in a statement.

Michael Taylor, a former member of the US special forces who now works in private security, and his son Peter had been extradited from the United States in early March after exhausting all resources. They were transferred to the Kosuge Detention Center in Tokyo, where Ghosn had been detained for 130 days, between November 2018 and April 2019.

The Taylors were arrested in May 2020 by the US justice, following a Japanese arrest warrant. They were then detained in the United States for their “great risk of flight.”On December 31, 2019, Japan was stunned to discover that its most famous defendant, Carlos Ghosn, had fled to Lebanon.

Two days earlier, while on bail awaiting trial for an alleged financial embezzlement at Nissan, the French-Lebanese-Brazilian had discreetly left Tokyo to reach Osaka (in the west of the country) by train with two accomplices.

He is suspected of escaping from the controls at Kansai International Airport, near Osaka, hiding in a large box of audio equipment aboard a private plane. At that time, baggage check was not mandatory in Japan for this type of aircraft.

Ghosn arrived in Beirut on December 30 after a stopover in Istanbul.

A US prosecution document refers to “one of the most blatant and best-orchestrated escapes in recent history.”

The disgraced car mogul, who is under an Interpol arrest request, remains out of the reach of Japanese justice because Lebanon does not extradite its nationals. However, the Lebanese justice has prohibited him from leaving the country.