Ex Nissan boss Ghosn gets $4.5m bail, may soon walk out of detention centre

Carlos Ghosn Photographer: Keith Bedford/Bloomberg

Company News

A Japanese court granted Carlos Ghosn bail Thursday, meaning the former Nissan boss could soon walk out of his Tokyo detention centre to prepare his defence against multiple charges of financial misconduct.

The Tokyo District Court set bail at 500 million yen ($4.5 million) as the 65-year-old auto sector legend faces four charges ranging from concealing part of his salary from shareholders to syphoning off Nissan funds for his personal use.

Prosecutors are likely to appeal the court's decision, delaying his immediate release but public broadcaster NHK said he could walk out of his detention centre "as early as Thursday".
Ghosn denies all the charges, with a spokesperson for the executive saying on Monday he would "vigorously defend himself against these baseless accusations and fully expects to be vindicated".
The spokesperson said Ghosn was being detained "under cruel and unjust conditions, in violation of his human rights, in an effort by prosecutors to coerce a confession from him".

On Monday, he was hit with what experts have described as the most serious charges yet as prosecutors accused him of syphoning off $5 million of Nissan cash transferred from the company to a dealership in Oman.

He also faces two charges of deferring some $80 million of his salary and hiding this in official documents to shareholders and seeking to shift personal investment losses to the firm during the 2008 financial crisis.


 Ghosn has already been granted bail once, posting $9 million and vowing not to leave Japan and to live in a small court-appointed apartment in central Tokyo -- a far cry from his former luxury suite...Read More

Smaller nations are the world's healthiest, Canada tops list

Current Affairs

There’s more to life than money, and economists know it. As new assessments of global living standards proliferate, attempting to gauge how healthy, happy and successful humans are depending on where they live, a pattern is slowly emerging.

While slight variations in data can throw up different winners, smaller countries are increasingly dominating the top of the lists while big countries with booming economies fall behind.

A new analysis, the Global Wellness Index published by investment firm LetterOne, ranks Canada as the best country out of the 151 nations evaluated. The US trails far behind, coming in at 37. In a tighter ranking of G-20 nations combined with the 20 most populous countries on the planet, South Africa comes in dead last, below Ukraine, Egypt and Iraq.

Based on a basket of metrics ranging from government healthcare spending to rates of depression, alcohol use, smoking, happiness and exercise, the new index is the latest attempt by economists to evaluate the world beyond economic growth. Last month, Bloomberg’s own research named Spain the world’s healthiest country.

A common thread in both surveys, and others like them, is that the top ranks are increasingly filled with smaller countries. This may be tied to researchers developing new metrics for the modern world, measures that don’t necessarily correlate economic health with actual health—let alone wellness—at the expense of other, more nuanced barometers.


 “The old concerns about growth—that it does not include every country, or every person in growing countries—are ever present,” said Richard Davies, a former Bank of England and UK Treasury economist who compiled the Global Wellness Index...Read More