The trial of Greg Kelly, the former close associate of Carlos Ghosn at Nissan who was arrested at the same time as him at the end of 2018 in Japan, will open on September 15 in Tokyo, AFP learned from a close source on Thursday. folder. The opening date of the trial of this 63-year-old American had been postponed several times in recent months, due in particular to the coronavirus pandemic, according to local media.
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Greg Kelly finds himself on the front line in this trial, Carlos Ghosn, the main accused, having fled to Lebanon at the end of 2019. Like his former boss, he rejects the accusations against him. He is accused of having helped Carlos Ghosn to conceal from the stock market authorities the equivalent of tens of millions of euros in income, which the big boss of the Renault-Nissan alliance was to receive later. He faces up to ten years in prison.
" I did nothing criminally reprehensible in Japan ", assured Greg Kelly in an interview with AFP at the beginning of the year, after the flight of Carlos Ghosn who had left him " stunned ". The main defendant having evaporated, " it seems rather difficult to have a really fair trial. How do you want to process this file in a logical way? He also wondered.
Former head of human resources and legal affairs at Nissan, Greg Kelly was arrested in November 2018 after his landing in Japan, where the Japanese group had summoned him on the pretext of an important meeting of the board of directors, of which he was member at the time.
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He then spent more than a month in detention, in solitary confinement, when he had initially planned to return as soon as possible to the United States to be operated on for a lumbar spinal stenosis. Since his release on bail, he has lived in a small rented apartment in central Tokyo, with a ban on leaving the country.
