CEO em Fuga: A História de Carlos Ghosn

It is an extraordinary story. A CEO who has been arrested and charged but not yet convicted of embezzlement, smuggles himself out of Japan, via a corporate jet, by hiding in a big box. Its stuff out of a novel.

It is a well-made documentary but given most documentaries made today are pretty good anyway, to be exceptional it needs to give the viewer as many facts and let them decide on the conclusions. The problem with this film is that I found it wanting in facts.

We are told the rot set in when Ghosn was informed of 3 employees at Renault who leaked trade secrets on electric cars to the Chinese. So, Ghosn sacked them. Only then it was divulged the 3 employees were innocent and the whole thing was made up. People were questioning Ghosn's integrity. The way I saw it - who was the dude who made up the lies? Why was not the investigation about the source of the lie? Was Ghosn part of the conspiracy? Where was the evidence to support this if that was the case? The documentary had fewer answers than we needed. It was all up in the air with all the wrong question asked.

Ghosn than got in hot water because of his high salary (and a very lavish party he threw), but again, did he break the law? It may not be ethical but what he was doing was not illegal. So jealously plays a large part in his downfall. Ofcourse, the people seeing green could not get over the fact they were still in a job because of Ghosn, not inspite of him. This was the man who turned around a huge loss-making company into a profitable one. The fact he did it twice, for Renault and Nissan, says a lot about Ghosn business prowess and intelligence. Then again, given we are talking about the French and Japanese psyche, that could go in some way to explain why he was hated. Being of Arab origin, he just wasn't one of "us". To its credit the documentary address this.

The biggest issue I had was the lack of evidence presented about Ghosn's presumed embezzlement or possible tax avoidance. No facts were supplied. We were just told the Renault business set up numerous subsidiary companies, but we are also told other car manufactures do the same, so I am not sure why this was a big deal then? It was through these subsidiaries that Ghosn accumulated wealth, but no details were supplied on how the alleged embezzlement operated, how much was siphoned and who else was implicated?

I came away knowing less about Ghosn's charges than I did going into it. The documentary slants on the side of presumed innocence which given the absolute lack of evidence against the man, is the only position to take.

The only fact I came away with is the 99% conviction rate of people arrested in Japan and that goes to explain why Ghosn fled.

The movie is clearly one sided against Carlos Ghosn. The Japanese executives conveniently try to shift the blame on Carlos for their lack of oversight and incompetence. There is no excuse for being complacent. You were paid to do your job, you can't claim ignorance later when you sighed on a document allowing the things you blame somebody of your embezzlement later. All the executives should have been arrested for the same reason Carlos went to jail for. I am glad he escaped the way he did. People like Ghosn are rare and undoubtedly brilliant. I think he deserved every penny he made. He turned around a loss making company into a profitable one and they have the nerve to blame him for anting a piece of the pie.

Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn" is an investigative feature-length documentary directed by Lucy Blakstad in 2022. It follows the rise and fall of Carlos Ghosn, a businessman in the car industry straddling 2 cultures. The film tracks the rise of Ghosn, a General Manager at French car manufacturer Renault in the late 90's as he takes control of Nissan in Japan and begins to take a firm grip over both companies. But when his business practices came into question, he was jailed in Japan while the scrutiny of his business practices raged in his absence. Whilst on parole, he and his associates plot to get him out of Japan, and intrigue ensues.

This film is an interesting deep dive into one of the more intriguing cases in modern times of a business leader who, once the golden child, had a phenomenal fall from grace. While online pundits applaud and worship and applaud Elon Musk and other car industry leaders as untouchable bastions of commercial enterprise, this film paints a more realistic picture of the life of a corporate leader who flew a little too close to the sun.

Want to read more, google - perspective documentary reviews.

As "Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn" (2022 release; 95 min) opens, the CEO of Renault and Nissan is fleeing Japan for his home country of Lebanon in 2019. We then go back to 1996, with Renault is serious financial trouble, and its then CEO picking Ghosn (pronounced "Gone") to come in and clean things up. In 1999, Renault buys a controlling stake in Nissan, another car manufacturer in financial dire straits, and Ghosn is dispatched to become Nissan's CEO... At this point we are 15 min into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is only the second feature-length documentary of director Lucy Blakstad, whom I had not heard of before. Here Blakstad brings us a 2-in-1: in the first hour, we witness the meteoric rise of Ghosn, resurrecting both Renault and Nissan by ruthlessly cutting costs and jobs where needed, and earning him the nickname the "Cost Killer" but later also "Mr. Fix-It" for turning around the financial fortunes of both companies. In the last half hour we witness the fall, when Ghosn is arrested by Japanese police in 2018 for (alleged) financial improprieties, just ahead of a planned full-blown merger between Renault and Nissan. We learn along the way that, once arrested, the conviction rate in Japanese courts is 99%. That doesn't sound normal to me. Did Ghosn commit financial crimes? I have no idea. This documentary feels a little rushed, to be honest. A lot of material is covered in just an hour and a half, and I wished that the film makers had gone a little deeper. The big mystery is how a once well-respected CEO comes crashing down for alleged financial crimes. This documentary doesn't explain it.

"Fury: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn" recently started streaming on Netflix, which recommended it to me based on my viewing habits. The documentary isn't bad but it feels like a missed opportunity, focusing on Ghosn's rise and then his improbable escape from Japan, but skipping a lot of details why he was arrested in the first place. Of course don't take my word for it, so I'd suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Missing from this documentary is, after all the interviews with the grieving family and employees: is Carlos Ghosn guilty or not? The family, a few ex employees, and some of the journalists, focus on their view of the harshness of Japanese legal system. But they never really say that Ghosn was innocent of the charges. My takeaway is that he definitely did something wrong and that ego and greed got the better of him.

The producers threw in a few token interviews with Nissan and Japanese government officials but if I did not know better, I'd say this Netflix piece was funded by the "Carlos Ghosn got a raw deal" foundation.