[8] Bichara Ghosn was an entrepreneur and eventually headed several companies, in businesses including the rubber trade, the sale and purchase of agricultural products, and aviation.

[9] His son Jorge Ghosn married Rose Jazzar, a Nigerian-born Lebanese woman[10] whose family came from Miziara in Lebanon then went to Brazil,[7] where they settled in Porto Velho, the state capital of Rondônia, and had four children.

[15][18][19] After graduation in 1978, Ghosn spent 18 years at Michelin, Europe's largest tire maker, initially training and working in several plants in France and Germany.

[15][23] He returned to Rio de Janeiro, reporting directly to François Michelin, who tasked Ghosn with turning around the operation, which was unprofitable and struggling under Brazil's hyperinflation.

[15] When he joined the company, Nissan had a consolidated interest-bearing net automotive debt of more than $20 billion (more than 2 trillion yen),[24][36] and only three of its 46 models sold in Japan were generating a profit.

[42][46][47] Ghosn was the fourth non-Japanese person to lead a Japanese automaker, after Mark Fields, Henry Wallace and James Miller were appointed by Ford to run Mazda in the late 1990s.

[53][54] Ghosn changed Nissan's official company language from Japanese to English, and included executives from Europe and North America in key global strategy sessions for the first time.

Ghosn became, in addition to his Renault–Nissan posts, chairman of Mitsubishi, with an aim to rehabilitate the automaker after a months-long scandal involving fuel-economy misrepresentation and consequent falling revenues.

[118] On 19 November 2018, Tokyo district prosecutors arrested Ghosn at 4:30 p.m. upon his re-entry into Japan aboard a private jet that had come from Lebanon,[119] for questioning over allegations of false accounting.

Saikawa stressed that the dismissal was the result of an internal inquiry by Nissan,[124][121] and alleged that Ghosn and Kelly had under-reported their compensation (a violation of securities law) and used company assets for personal use.

[126][127] Leaks to the media said that Ghosn had planned to call a vote to fire Nissan CEO Saikawa and reinstate Kelly (who had semi-retired to the U.S. in 2015) to active service at the scheduled board meeting.

[128] Ghosn and Kelly were reportedly arrested on information provided by an unidentified non-Japanese executive in Nissan's legal department, in the second deal ever struck under Japan's recently introduced plea bargaining system.

[130] Ghosn made his first public appearance after his arrest at an arraignment on Tuesday, 8 January 2019, where he asserted his innocence, making a statement in response to the main allegations against him; however, his bid to be released from prison on these charges was rejected.

[136] Ghosn again appealed the denial of bail from 8 January 2019 and offered to meet greater restrictions and higher guarantees of appearance in return for his release, including wearing an ankle bracelet and posting his Nissan stock as collateral.

[135] However, France's financial minister Bruno Le Maire stated on 16 January that Renault may seek a new CEO to replace Ghosn due to his continued incarceration.

[151] In mid-February 2019, Ghosn's lead counsel Motonari Otsuru stepped down and was replaced by Jun'ichirō Hironaka, who has a record of success in a number of high-profile cases.

He also claimed that the payments to Juffali were meant to help Nissan fix a dispute with a local distributor, and to open a bank contract to convert his salary from yen to US dollars, in order to avoid currency swings.

[161] In June 2019, Renault published that in an internal audit they had uncovered 11 million euros in questionable expenses by Ghosn,[162][163][164] which was followed by the French state opening its own investigation into his actions.

[161] In September 2019, in one of the first legal accords of the saga, Ghosn settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over claims of failing to disclose more than $140 million in pay to him from Nissan.

[172] In his statement, Ghosn claimed that he would "no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant and basic human rights are denied.

[179][180] The Lebanese Ambassador to Japan, Nidal Yehya, denied the involvement of the Embassy of Lebanon in Ghosn's escape, but "always stressed to him that he must abide by all the conditions of his release, as decided by the Criminal Court in Tokyo".

[185][186] Ghosn later addressed reports that his family, including his wife Carole, may have played a role in his departure from Japan, stating that "such speculation is inaccurate and false.

"[187] On 7 January 2020, prosecutors in Japan issued an arrest warrant for Carole Ghosn on suspicion of giving false testimony during a court hearing in April 2019.

[188] Carlos Ghosn held his first press conference since leaving Japan on 8 January 2020, in which he described his imprisonment conditions, pleaded innocence, and named Nissan executives who plotted his demise.

[194] On 8 July 2020, The Nikkei reported that $862,500 was paid from a Paris bank account related to Ghosn to Promote Fox, a company managed by Michael Taylor, an ex-Green Beret who helped him flee to Lebanon.

[199][200] On 23 November 2020, a panel of human rights experts working with the United Nations concluded that Ghosn's arrest and detention in Japan were "fundamentally unfair".

"The Carlos Ghosn case, including Greg Kelly and the Taylors, is an aberration," said William Cleary, an expert on Japanese law with a doctorate in criminal procedure.

[207] Arrest warrants issued by Japanese prosecutors on 30 January 2020 claimed that the escape operation was orchestrated by former United States Army Special Forces soldier Michael Taylor, a private-security contractor with extensive contacts in Lebanon.

[231][232] Ghosn, whom Forbes magazine called "the hardest-working man in the brutally competitive global car business",[25] as of 2006 was splitting his time between Paris and Tokyo and logging roughly 150,000 nautical miles (280,000 km; 170,000 mi) in airplanes per year.

[227] He has been noted for his direct, results-and-execution-oriented style in business strategy meetings,[25] and for his interest in resolving problems from within a company by listening to workers and by cross-functional and cross-cultural team groupings.