There are about fifteen of them – business leaders, press bosses and even… an army general – listening attentively to a professor not quite like the others. The question of the day ? “How to run a business in times of crisis.” For more than two and a half hours, he recounts, with undiminished energy, his management advice in front of an established audience. The “students” do not care that he is one of the most sought-after personalities on the planet: in their eyes, he is the paragon of “Lebanese” success.
At the end of March, Carlos Ghosn, the former emblematic boss of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, was for the third consecutive year at the helm of a master class called “Business strategy and performance” at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK). , north of Beirut. During this program in ten modules which will continue in May and for which the participants paid the modest sum of 20,000 dollars, intervene in particular knowledge of the former magnate of the automobile, including two French, Hervé Coyco, ex -director of Michelin Asia Pacific, now assistant professor at HEC, and Christian Streiff, ex-CEO of PSA Peugeot Citroën.
Above his head, the Interpol red notice…
Since his surprise arrival in Lebanon on December 30, 2020, after an incredible flight from Japan where he was imprisoned for nearly six months and is accused of financial embezzlement, Carlos Ghosn, who refused the interview request from L’Express, has been sinking. quiet days in a gilded prison, stuck in a country the size of a French department which is also going through the worst economic crisis in its history.
Barely a few days after escaping from the clutches of Japanese justice, it was at the monastery of Annaya, near Saint-Charbel, the patron saint of the Maronites, that he went to meditate, as he told daily An Nahar.
Convinced of being at the heart of a conspiracy, he dodges and tries to forget, from his Lebanese bubble, the Interpol red notice that has been hovering over his head since January 2, 2020, as well as the warrant of judgment issued by the French courts on April 22, 2022. “Why didn’t he go to a tax haven? He could have, but he chose Lebanon, he feels much calmer there”, confides a friend, on condition of anonymity. The country of the Cedar does not extradite its nationals, it knows it is safe there. “The Carlos I know wants to laugh, decompress, we don’t talk about these things,” says another acquaintance when discussing his concerns with the law.
The latter catch up with him all the same, French judges having traveled to Beirut at the end of February and the beginning of March 2022 to question him. Interviewed by France 2 in June 2022, Carlos Ghosn deplored a “relentlessness of the investigating judges in France” and wishes “to be tried in Lebanon”. However, there is little chance that his files will be handed over to the Lebanese justice system, known for its collusion with the authorities.
“He did no harm to Lebanon”
Born in Brazil into a family of immigrants from the Maronite Christian bourgeoisie, Carlos Ghosn came to live in Lebanon at the age of 8 and has since maintained ties with his land of origin. His eleven years spent on the benches of Notre-Dame de Jamhour between 1960 and 1971, a prestigious school whose alumni form a powerful network, enabled him to weave solid relations through the current Christian elite. His high school classmates have remained close to him and eat lunch or dinner with him from time to time without bothering him about his legal hassles. “We are not close to Carlos Ghosn, there are much worse people here, corrupt people of all stripes. He did not harm Lebanon,” said a Lebanese banker.
Poster in a street in Beirut, on December 6, 2018, in support of the businessman of Lebanese origin, Carlos Ghosn, arrested in Japan on charges of embezzlement
© / afp.com/JOSEPH EID
On the sidewalk of the now famous pink house, the main residence of the Ghosns in the golden square of the Achrafieh district, armed men keep onlookers away who are too curious. The residence remains today at the heart of the legal soap opera which opposes Renault-Nissan to their former employee. According to Japanese investigators, the building was bought for $8.75 million in 2012 by a subsidiary of Nissan, and renovated for nearly $6 million through a Lebanese interior decorator, friend of the Ghosn couple. To the podcast Sardinian after dinner, he claimed that the house was bought for him and that the contract stipulated that “on the day he retires, she [lui] would come back”. Officially, it is owned by the Lebanese company Phoinos Investments, registered at the address of a lawyer and former schoolmate. Like this luxurious property, Twig, a 37-meter yacht anchored in the very chic marina of Dbayeh, is also implicated by the investigators.
In Beirut, Carlos Ghosn, who celebrated his 69th birthday last March, is “a happy guy who realized he had to bury the old Carlos”, says a relative. His new life, however, seems very bland compared to the old one. Gone are the palaces and meetings on all continents, make way for discreet guesthouses across the country, as a couple or with the family, and dinners with the Beirut gratin. You can come across him seated in the best restaurants in the capital or at a classical music festival. He often plays bridge at the very select Aeroclub on Sursock Street. “Even if he no longer has such a hectic life, he is someone who is never bored,” says a business manager.
Series, documentaries and film projects galore
A sign of his very special situation, he never travels without his close guard – some of his bodyguards are even from the American Special Forces -, who follow him both at social events and on mountain roads, where he regularly walks, rides an electric bike or hunts. “I sometimes meet him in hiking gear in the village or passing in his car with tinted windows, but he is a very discreet person,” says a resident of the village of Douma. This is where the former CEO will soon enjoy a luxurious second home with his family after several years of renovation and construction work. The businessman acquired between 2019 and 2020 an old house and land for more than half a million dollars which would have been paid cash to a dozen heirs. From this property located about thirty minutes from the village, he can contemplate the vines of the Ixsir estate, a winery founded in 2008.
“As soon as I arrived in Lebanon, I breathed. At that moment, I knew that the fight to defend my name and my heritage had begun”, affirmed Carlos Ghosn to An Nahar. Since he has been actively working on his rehabilitation, the film, documentary or book projects, with which he has sometimes associated himself, have not dried up. After a documentary on Netflix, Fall of the God of Carsa big-budget American series has just been announced with, in the role of Ghosn, Tony Shalhoub, an American star of… Lebanese origin