People
23/11/2018

Ghosn Possibly Owned Luxury Homes In Multiple Cities Bought Of Nissan’s Money




The ousted Chairman of Nissan Motors Co, Carlos Ghosn, is being investigated about whether he had directed a subsidiary of Nissan to purchase a luxury residential property for his personal use.
 
Ghosn is still under arrest in Japan and the investigations are being carries out by the special investigative unit of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. Ghosn has been changed of financial embellishments and hiding financial data information for years – including his yearly compensation that he received from the car marker, in documents filed by him with the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He has has also been charged of using company money to meet his personal needs.
 
According to reports, one of the properties that is being investigated is in a Middle Eastern city, the size location and the possible price of which provided a hit about the luxurious life style Ghosn used to lead. 
 
The property in question is a .luxurious and stylish home on a corner plot in the capital city of Lebanon and is just meters away from a very popular Mediterranean seafront. The building is three stories high above the street level. There are several security cameras placed at the entrance of the building, according to the reports, and the house is guarded by a boundary wall about 5 meters high.
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Media reports also quoted a number local residents and a real estate players in the city where the property is situated sating that the house is used by Ghosn only about once a month, and yet the house has his permanent personal chef and other staff. The last time he was in the house was back in October this year. According to a report published in the Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, the property was probably worth at least US$3 million, or around 334 million yen, according to information from an individual in the real estate market in central Lebanon.
 
The investigations are also centred around another property which is a two-story white house located in Baabda, which is a locality a community situated in the mountains about 20 kilometers east of Beirut. The report quoted sources saying that Ghosn and his wife had lived in the house until about 10 years ago. Investigators are not yet certain about the ownership of the house but Ghosn has said in a magazine interview that he owned a property in Baabda.
 
According to another report in a Japanese newspaper quoting a town government employee in charge of taxation, despite the wealth that the Ghosn couple owned, their lifestyle was very simple. Ghosn's then wife seemed to dislike waste, and turned plastic bottles into flower pots, the report stated quoting the civil servant. Ghosn's Christian Maronite faith was shared by many of the local residents and the roof over the house’s front entrance had a statue of the Virgin Mary.
 
There are also suspicion of Ghosn had used Nissan’s money to provide him homes in his home country of Brazil for his personal usage as well as in France and the Netherlands. The same may have been done by Ghosn for owning properties in New York and Tokyo, reported Mainichi citing a source close of the investigations in Tokyo.
 
(Source:www.mainichi.jp)

Christopher J. Mitchell
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