According to a court source, Lebanon has received an Interpol red notice for the arrest of billionaire Carlos Ghosn at the request of France.
The 68-year-old car industry mogul, who is French, Lebanese, and Brazilian, escaped to Lebanon in December 2019 while facing prosecution in Japan. Since 2018, he has been under house arrest.
The warning was delivered to the Lebanese judiciary on Thursday. It is based on an international arrest warrant obtained approximately a month ago by French officials.
According to a judicial source, Lebanon’s prosecutor general, Judge Ghassan Oueidat, obtained the warrant following hearings conducted by a group of French judges who visited Lebanon for the first time in June 2021. They listened to Ghosn for four days in response to a complaint filed against him in Paris.
When Ghosn was arrested in 2018 on allegations of “not reporting his full earnings and diverting corporate cash for personal reasons,” he was chairman of Nissan and Mitsubishi and CEO of Renault.
France charges him with “about €15 million ($15.8 million) in questionable transfers between his Renault-Nissan alliance and events Ghosn hosted at the magnificent Palace of Versailles, including deliberately utilizing corporate resources to organize a party for personal interests.”
According to the source, Judge Oueidat was anticipated to submit the Interpol notification to the discriminatory attorney general, Judge Imad Qabalan, who attended the French judicial delegation sessions with Ghosn.
According to the source, based on the notification, Judge Qabalan may question Ghosn and decide whether he should be detained.
“If Judge Qabalan finds Ghosn guilty of any crime, he can request his full file from the French authorities and try him in Lebanon under the Lebanese Penal Code,” the person added.
“In the event that the crimes charged against Ghosn are not mentioned in the penal code, or if they are charges that the Lebanese penal code does not criminalize, he will leave him be.”
According to the source, despite the fact that Lebanon and France have an extradition treaty, Ghosn will be tried in Lebanon since he is of Lebanese nationality, and Lebanon has barred the CEO from travelling.
Lebanon seized Ghosn’s passports in 2020, and he has yet to seek their return.
The tycoon fled Japan by concealing in baggage on a private jet departing from Kansai International Airport. He has remained in Lebanon ever since, denying any involvement.
An American father and son helped Ghosn flee Japan. The US handed them over to Japanese authorities and they confessed in a Tokyo court that they had been paid $1.3 million to do so. They face a prison sentence of up to three years.
Meanwhile, Lebanese judicial authorities on Thursday released 72-year-old Ziad Taqi Al-Din, whose name had been linked to lawsuits related to charges of fraud and forgery filed in Paris against former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Taqi Al-Din, who has dual Lebanese and French nationality, was arrested in Beirut in 2020 based on an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol. He was later released on bond with a travel ban and his passport was confiscated.
The Lebanese judiciary requested his file from Paris for trial in Beirut, refusing to hand him over to the French judiciary.
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