Renault and Nissan spar in legal letters over Carlos Ghosn
French carmaker says Japanese partner acted as ‘extension’ of prosecutor’s office
Renault has accused Nissan of collaborating with Tokyo prosecutors in the probe into Carlos Ghosn, while the Japanese carmaker has hit back that its French partner has resisted a full investigation of its former chief executive.
The accusations have flown in lawyers’ letters between the two sides, which question the future of the 20-year-old partnership between the carmakers.
The acerbic exchange of letters, seen by the Financial Times, shows how difficult it will be to make peace in spite of public support for the alliance from President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and the new heads of the two corporations.
Renault executives and board members say they have yet to see conclusive evidence of Mr Ghosn’s guilt. They accuse their Nissan counterparts of going behind their backs in trying to question Renault employees in the internal Nissan investigations, and of acting as an arm of the Japanese prosecutors who have indicted Mr Ghosn and kept him in a Tokyo jail since November 19.
“Nissan’s failure to disclose its review in a timely fashion and its unilateral, vague pronouncements about wrongdoing at RNBV [the Netherlands-registered joint venture Renault-Nissan BV] are highly inconsistent with the spirit of the Restated Alliance Master Agreement (Rama), and decades-long collaboration between Nissan and Renault,” Renault’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel wrote on January 16.
In the same letter, the Renault lawyers said some of the French group’s employees had been contacted by Nissan managers who introduced themselves as working with the Japanese prosecutors, “thus effectively converting the company and its counsel into an extension of the prosecutor’s office”.
In a response 12 days later, Nissan’s lawyers at Latham & Watkins rejected those accusations and in turn accused Renault of a lack of transparency and co-operation.
“Renault has resisted Nissan’s efforts to discover the truth about Mr Ghosn’s conduct — even though he is Renault’s nominee to Nissan’s board,” the letter said. “Indeed, at times Renault has attacked the investigation into Mr Ghosn’s conduct.”
It continued: “Renault long resisted Nissan’s attempt to investigate matters at the jointly-owned subsidiary Renault-Nissan BV . . . Such opposition to transparency is particularly concerning in light of evidence showing that RNBV was used as a vehicle to advance Mr Ghosn’s personal interests.”
The Nissan lawyers also said Renault’s requests for information about whistleblowers “could be interpreted as an attempt to protect Mr Ghosn”.
The exchange follows an 82-page list of questions sent in December by the Renault side to Nissan’s representatives in response to a Nissan lawyers’ presentation about the Japanese company’s findings on Mr Ghosn.
The lengthy December missive demanded details of how the investigations at Nissan had been conducted and which Nissan executives knew at the time the facts of the financial crimes alleged to have been committed by Mr Ghosn.
“Mr Ghosn was at Nissan for 20 years,” said one Renault board member in Paris who asked not to be named. “Many of the colleagues who today accuse him of these terrible things were his collaborators for a long time . . . Renault’s lawyers have put lots of questions to Nissan which have not been answered.” These included questions about the deferred compensation said to be owed to Mr Ghosn upon his retirement. “Did Nissan provision for these sums?”
Mr Ghosn himself has said he is the victim of “plot and treason” and has denied wrongdoing. The three-way alliance of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi that he headed — Renault has a 43 per cent stake in Nissan and Nissan has 15 per cent of Renault — makes more than 10m cars a year.
In a statement, Nissan said concerns raised by Renault’s external lawyers “have already been reviewed and fully addressed in a series of verbal and written responses”. It added the communications no longer reflect the current state of discussions.
Since the exchanges in December and January, the two companies have hired the French auditor Mazars and formally launched a joint investigation led by their auditing teams to look into potential misconduct within the alliance.
The investigation is expected to focus on executive remuneration, expenses and other payments made through RNBV, a 50-50 joint venture set up in Amsterdam in 2002 that was headed by Mr Ghosn. Another area of focus is €20m that RNBV spent on consultants in 2015 and 2016, according to a person with knowledge of the joint probe.
“The joint investigation has already begun and various things will likely come out of this,” said another person familiar with the joint probe. “We believe RNBV was a breeding ground for misconduct.”