But prosecutors in a legal system that boasts a 99 percent conviction rate say otherwise.
In closing their case Sept. 29, prosecutor Yukio Kawasaki said it was clear that Kelly “conspired” with former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn and others to falsify Nissan’s financial filings to understate Ghosn’s compensation by tens of millions of dollars.
“Kelly’s role was to study and prepare methods for the payment of this backdoor compensation,” he said.
“This case involves a criminal act that was well organized and conducted for an extended period of time while being strictly confidential, and its wrongfulness is quite grave,” the prosecutor said.
Prosecutors allege Ghosn, 67, and Kelly hid some $84 million in postponed compensation from 2010 to 2018. Both men, arrested the same day in 2018, deny any wrongdoing.
But after Ghosn fled Japan for Lebanon in 2019, Kelly, his longtime American human resources chief and a former director on the board, was left to fight the charges alone.
Kelly readily admits Ghosn took a massive pay cut to the tune of around half his salary in 2010 when Japan’s financial disclosure rules changed. According to Kelly, Ghosn feared that if the true scale of his Nissan paycheck were known, he would face withering backlash in France, where he was also chairman of Renault.
