Used to be that Carlos Ghosn was very popular in Japan, where he ran Nissan.
Then things turned south for Carlos and Nissan.
His trial for financial crimes in Japan is scheduled for next year.
But he did not appreciate the fact that he was being prosecuted. He said he was the victim of injustice.
To prevent his leaving the country, his three passports were being held by his legal defense team in Tokyo.
Then he skipped.
Ghosn was born in Brazil, and he has citizenship in France and Lebanon, where he’s very popular.
And that’s where he is now.
He arrived yesterday in Beirut, without a passport, on board a private plane from Turkey.
Read all about it at https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/business/ghosn-escape-japan-lebanon-scli-intl/index.html.
This leaves millions of people around the world, especially Nissan employees of all shapes and sizes, and the Japanese prosecutorial team, wondering how in the world Carlos managed to get out of Japan without a passport.
Japan is a notably ethnocentric country, and Ghosn was under surveillance, and he doesn’t look in the least Japanese.
So we assigned our Chief Investigative Reporter, associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman, to get the scoop.
Which she did.
Taiwan-born Elaine Chao is married to Mitch “Triple-Chin” McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Congress. Chao is Donald Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, so she knows a lot about airplanes.
“You see, Susanna," Chao explained to Sherman, in her comfy Capitol Hill home, with McConnell sitting next to her (Chao is much, much prettier than McConnell, who has been wondering for many, many years how he, a notably ugly man, was lucky enough to get hitched to a pretty Chinese woman).
“Susanna,” Chao continued, “it was insanely easy. I just told my Federal Aviation Administration Director, Stephen Dickson, to slip into Tokyo with several of Mr. Trump’s Russian bodyguards, all of whom are fluent in Japanese.”
“They put Mr. Ghosn in an orange crate, very similar to the way that the Duke of Edinburgh was smuggled out of Greece so he could marry Queen Elizabeth.”
“I was the one who arranged with Turkish Airlines to slip Carlos into the cargo of a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 Max, that got him to Istanbul, strangely enough, very safely, and there, when he landed, I met him and put him on a small private plane which Mitch here likes to take to get him out of Capitol Hill, where there is not a single Democrat who likes him."
Noted Denver filmmaker Dan Bostrum told a solitary reporter that he’s under contract with Ghosn and Lebanese President Michel Aoun to make a blockbuster movie about Ghosn’s daring escape.
“SR,” Bostrum said, “this movie will be ever so much better than Argo."