In the Season One finale of Making A Killing, Bethany brings back her friend, colleague and co-author Joe Nocera (Bloomberg Opinion columnist and creator of The Shrink Next Door podcast) to bookend the season with a lively analysis of the former head of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault S.A., Carlos Ghosn... sure to go down in history as one of the wildest business stories ever. Time and time again we learn that in business, truth is always stranger than fiction.
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Thank you so much for downloading making a killing. I'm Bethany McClain, and I'm cutting through the noise to reframe the stories you know and uncover the ones you don't know. Truth is stranger than fiction. I think about that saying a lot, because it has the great virtue of being well true, and it's particularly true when it comes to the world of business. I mean, from the financial crisis to Bernie Madoff, you could not make the stuff up even with that high bar. The story of Carlos Gone stands out. Gone, of course, is the former head of Nissan Motor and Renault. He is was a revered figure in the automotive world. In the fall of twenty eighteen, he was jailed in Japan on charges of financial misconduct. While he was out on bail, he hatched an escape plan that involved being smuggled out of the country, escaping security by hiding in a large black box, which, thank goodness, apparently did have breathing holes cut in it. He's now living in a pink mansion in Lebanon, a pink mansion that Nissan had bought and renovated for his use. I mean, right, talk about truth being stranger than fiction. So there are at least two sides to this story. The official version, the Japanese version, is that Gone stole from Nissan, partly by paying himself more than anyone, including investors new Here's a surprise. Going denies those charges. In his telling, Nissan's Japanese executives wanted to be rid of him and found a horrible way to do it. I have not fled justice, I have escaped injustice and political persecution, Go and said in a statement after his escape. For sure, Japan treat's white color criminals very differently than the US does. Among other things, Gone was held in solitary confinement and interrogated for eight hours a day. The conviction rate is close to one. My longtime friend Jonah Sarah wrote in a recent Bloomberg piece that Gone thought to himself, you are going to die in Japan if you don't get out, So Gone took matters into his own hands. Is this justifiable or is this a sign of the entitlement of the global elite? And who is Carlos Going an innocent man wrongly accused or a common thief. I began this season of making a killing with Joan Oh Sarah talking about Jewel, So it seemed fitting to end it with Joe, who wrote this about Carlos going. When you get right down to it, Nissan and the Japanese prosecutors put a rich, powerful man, a man unaccustomed to being defied through hell. Now that he has escaped, it's his turn to put them through hell. I'm thrilled to have Joe here to talk about what will surely go down in history is one of the greatest business stories ever. Certainly one of the greatest escapes ever, that's for sure. So how did he do it? Let's start with that. Well, the best part about that as nobody yet knows. There's only I mean, for instance, you know, when you think about it, if you make an escape like that, you have to plan it for months, right months? How did he find the guy who planned it? How did they how did they communicate with each other? Well? Wait on that question, is it even a guy who planned it or do we think it might have been his wife? Oh? No, no, no, no, no, well I'm pretty sure it wasn't his wife. No, there's a there's a man who's a you know, a former paramilitary type who does security these kind of high risk security Michael Taylor. Right, Yes, that's right. His name is Michael Taylor. Thank you. So how did Michael Taylor get in touched with Carlos Gone? How did they plan it so that Gone knew what to do and when to do it? Um, it's obvious that they had They had come to Japan and they were watching the people who were watching Gone. So there was a there was a camera that watched them all the time, and there were people out Japanese you know, security guards outside. But they realized that there was a certain week in the year when the Japanese basically took the week off because it was a you know, their high holidays, they're big vacation time, and they weren't there, and they figured that out and they realized that that was potentially the time to do it. And so, you know, the first round of rumors, who was I'm so sorry it wasn't true, was that he had he had hidden in a in a in a musical instrument case for like for a double base doesn't but you know, it's kind of pretty amazing what he did. He he walked out, he put one of those masks around his face, as many Japanese people do when their outdoors. You know, he walked about a mile, he walked into a hotel and then he walked out to the other side of the hotel um presumably not being followed, obviously not being followed. And then he got on a train. Wow. And he and he took like a three hour train ride to Osaka. And once he got there, that's when he was met. This team of people who put him in this big black box, put him on that line alone, this team of people who put him in a big black box, righty, and they put him on an airplane, a private airplane. They didn't want to fly directly to Berute because they were afraid that that would send up too many signals. So there was an istanbol right and then he had to get past you know, customs, a second round of customs. Having sneaked past the Japanese customs, then he had to get past the Turkish customs. So we went back in the black box. They took him out of one airplane, put him in another airplane, and he landed in Lebanon. And Lebanon presumably he can't be extradited. Well, Lebanon does not have an extradition treaty with Japan. Also, he is a Lebanese citizen among his other citizenships. He is a highly revered figure in Lebanon. They even have a postage stamp named after him. I mean, he's one of their few kind of international businessman. They don't have very many. And then his wife met him also in Lebanon, so she obviously knew what was going on. So she goes to Lebanon. And then the hilarious thing is he you know that this is one of the houses that he had refurbished, renovated Nissons die. Now the question is whether Nissan knew that or not. But he's basically he's squatting in it, and he's kind of daring Nissan to try and kick him out. And is it true that it's pink? I don't know why that details definitely think it's definitely. I've seen it from the archide. But see, this is why I asked the question about whether his wife was involved, because his wife met him there, so she had to have known. Yes, that's absolutely true. She had to have known something for sure. But don't forget that he had not been one of the things that most upset him during his ordeal. And I'm sure, we'll talk about that ordeal in a bit is that he is. Part of his bail, he was not allowed to speak to his wife at all, and his children really, at least one of them couldn't come to Japan because she was afraid she'd be arrested too, So he didn't have a lot of contact with his family. He Wanda spoke speaking to his wife twice with permission and with people listening in. Once was around Thanksgiving and once was around Christmas. We're going to come back to the conditions of his bail and the conditions of his treatment because it's important both in the micro and interesting in the macro. But what's really interesting about this is we know the details of the escape, but we have no clue how it was planned. And listening to you talk about the monitoring of his conversations with his wife, how did he manage to have communication with the people who helped him escape if everything he said was being monitored. When he was in the home that he was using in Japan in Tokyo, he was not allowed to have any electronics, no internet, no television, no nothing. But when he but during the day he was allowed to go to his lawyer's office where he did to have access to a computer and did meet with people, and he didn't meet people were allowed to come and meet with him. So presumably that's how it was done in person or possibly over the internet, when he was at his lawyer's office. Although his lawyers says he knows nothing, I'm not sure his lawyer didn't know nothing. I'm sure his lawyer. Jampan is a country where face matters so much, yep. And he humiliated his lawyers by doing this. His lawyers had vouched for him, and his lawyers were trying to show through his trial that a Westerner could get a fair trial. That was their goal. And you know, they one of the very tiny handful of big time defense attorneys. I mean in the US they're all over the place, but in Japan they're very rare. And this was a moment for these lawyers to try and make the case that Japan could treat a Westerner fairly. I just wanted to pause on this note, for it was from the Wall Street Journal and they wrote that the planning involved a team of between ten and fifteen people of different nationalities, and that in all the team took more than twenty trips to Japan and visited at least ten Japanese airports before selecting the Osaka Airport as a week link. I mean, it's a stunning degree of coordination. Right before we move on from this, Michael Taylor, this operative who helped Going. He's a story in his own right, isn't he? He is He's done this a few times before. He's actually been in prison for something, um, you know, and and yes he when when the when the film gets made, Michael Taylor will have a starring role forre. You can just see that this is everything about this is cinematic, right right, get right down to the black boxman. In fact, where's rumors? Wall Street Journal pointed a rumor that, uh, Carlos Gone was already in negotiations with Netflix, but he denied it. He denied it, So tell tell me more about who Carlos Gone is. For people who don't, who haven't followed the craziness in the automotive industry, one way to think about it, Carlos Gone is the Lee Iacocca of the modern era, the larger than life auto exac who performs miracles and does is that is that real? To some degree? It is, yes, So he's hard, is what happened. Carlos Gone was the CEO and chairman of Renault, a French company. Ye, Nissan is in terrible, terrible trouble, and so they go to him and they ask him to what could he do to help them? So what he does is he sets up It's not a merger, it's an alliance. They remain separate companies, but they do things like they buy supplies together, and they do some back office things that save money, and they coordinate in various ways. They actually even for a long time split up territories. So like Nissan was big in the US, Renault was big in Europe. They both went to China and you know, I said he was Lee a Coca. A better phrase might be he was the Marshal Tito of the of the auto business. Because what you had was you had this very French culture Renault, this extremely Japanese culture Nissan, and you had this one guy who somehow managed to ride herd over all of it. So then Nissan didn't. He did turn Nissan around. I mean it was really quite dramatic, to the point where Nissan became the stronger of the two. Companies and Renault became the weaker, but because of the way the alliance was structured, Renault owned more of Nissan, like fifteen percent. Then Nissan owned a Renault which was five percent. So one of the things, one of them that began to upset the Japanese not the only thing, but one of the things was that Renault, which had become the weaker company, still add the stronger position on the board and in terms of stock ownership, and so do you credit do most people credit Nissan's ability to thrive to Carlos Scone and he is he that guy who was able to pull these companies through an incredibly troubled and difficult time in the automotive industry globally, Most people do give him that credit. Yes, he's viewed as as a as a as a true giant of the AutoWorld, to the point where as he as he noted during his flamboyant press conference, once he escaped. You know, Steve Rattner approached him during the financial crisis when he was the autos Are Obama's artos Are and asked him if he would be willing to come in and take over General Motors. Wow, Okay, so this guy, he doesn't lack for ego either. So well, I do have to say, yes, if you've if you've been around CEOs, there's a certain type, you know, larger than life, totally convinced they're right about everything. Sometimes they're all never in doubt, exactly exactly. Um but really, um kind of aggressive he was? He is was all of those things. Um uh. And yeah, you could sort of see how he would drive the Japanese mad. And before we come back to that, wasn't he trying to do something with fat and Chrysler? He was trying to pull off yet another coup, right, Yes he was. He had already um brought me to Beish into the alliance. Okay, Um, he was, you know, maneuvering to bring other people into other companies into the alliance. But the big issue really really for Nissan was they felt that he was going to not just have an alliance, but he was going to merge Nissan and Renault and they were dead set against that. And why because they perceived Nissan is a stronger company, or because of Japanese pride and Nissan not wanting to see it submerged or subsumed into Renauld. Both is the answer. Um, you know they're they're you know, the Pese. There were xenophobic people, without question, and um uh, there were a lot of tensions within the alliance even you know, before this this came up, the idea of a merger, and yes, Nissan felt like, we're the king of the hill. Now, why should we stoop to help, you know, struggling we're now. Yeah, I just saw this note in here that six years after after after Gone took the top job, Nissan had surpassed Honda to become Japan's number two automaker. It's market capitalization had quintupled and its operating margin had risen tenfold. So that I mean, as I and in the modern world, that's how you become a legend. Yeah, I guess that's true. So were there any whispers about him up until the fall of twenty eighteen? Was there any talk that this guy was somehow overstepping some kind of bounds or was the fall of twenty and eighteen, when it all exploded out of seemingly nowhere, there was not so much as a whisper in terms of, you know, whether people thought he was doing things on the fly or on the side, or or or playing tricks or playing games. It was one of the things that were so shocking about this story is it's it's it's as if Mary Barra flew to Canada and was was was arrested for you know, uh, stealing from General Motors. That's how kind of shocking this was. And the way they did it, you know, um, the Japanese Nissan executives who were plotting this with prosecutors and that that is why. Oh yes, there's no question about that. Um, you know. They they they tricked Goons former number two into flying back to Japan, which he had not done in three years and was awaiting back surgery. Wow, they tricked him. An old friend of his from Nissan called him and said, hey, we really need to hear for this meeting. We really come on, We'll send the private plane and they did, and he lands and he gets arrested, and then gone has no idea this is coming. He lands and he gets arrested, and that's where they find out, and that's where the world finds out that there are these allegations against him. Truth is stranger than fiction, indeed, right, it's it's it's it's an astonishing story. One of the problems with trying to grapple with the story is that it's really hard to know even now who's telling the truth. Why is it so hard to know? His compensation was public? Right? These were public companies, and so what was disclosed is knowable and what he took is knowable. Where does the complexity come in? Okay? Maybe pause first on what the charges against him. So there's a couple of things. The first charge is that he hid compensation from Nissan and the board. This seems frankly pretty unlikely, although he did settle with the sec for small, by his terms, a small amount of money, um without uh, you know, denying. Was it affirming or denying the charges? Yes, but the exact language was that they he settled charges that that he and Nissan had failed to disclose more than one hundred and forty million in compensation and benefits due to be paid to him in retirement. Right, So that hundred So that one hundred and forty million is a big is a big sticking point. So he and his former number two, his name is Greg Kelly, they say there was they had not signed off on the deal yet, that that they had they had sketched it out along with some Nissan executives. They had all sketched it out together, but there was no uh guarantee it was going to happen. It had not been um uh, it had not been certified, had not been approved by the board, and so they say there's no there there. Nissan says, you know, this was that you were doing this behind our back, and in so doing you were violating the Japanese law. Okay, So that's number one. Number two the second set of charges was that he was, you know, an effect laundering, laundering Nissan's money to put it in his pocket. So the big example of that that when they he uses is um that there was a dealer in the Middle East and Nissan paid this dealer millions of dollars and then, according to Nissan, the dealer somehow funneled that back some of that back to Carlos Gone. Gone says it was all on the up and up, that the money that was spent to this Midias dealer, who he acknowledges was a friend, was not unlike any you know, up front incentives to any dealer. So he says, you know, that was on the up and up, and then the third sort of set of charges. Um, it's really more like Dennis Kozlowski's uh six thousand dollars curtain shower curtain. Yes, that's right, it's more like that, which was not illegal, right, but it was a waste of corporate assets. And so he had these houses, you know, literally like five houses that were all renovated for him on Nissan's dime, all supposedly owned by Nissan. His kids all went to Stanford on Nissan's dime. His kids cut and went to Stanford on Nissan's dime. Well, but I want to figure out how to work that one that that you really I mean he had that in his contract, okay, but they would pay for it. And then the famous, most famous of all, the birthday party for his wife and Versailles Marie Antoinette teamed right yes, and then he goes at the press conference he gave, he really went off on that. It's like, we've spent so much money helping Versailles, making Rascaille great, Versaids the place everybody wants to go. Rasaide's good for our customers, it's good for our you know, ad agencies. Da da da da da da dada so he somehow argue, we're defensive about at Versailles. I think that every any single other thing that he spoke about. So he somehow argues that hosting a Marie Antoinette themed birthday party for his wife at Versailles was beneficial to Nissan's brand pretty much. But I don't I don't know that it was Marie Antoinette. Okay, I've read that somewhere that might that might that might be like that, like the musical instrument case right, too good to be true? Um So, so what does Renault say about all of this, because they you would think they would have a view too. Are they on Nissan's site or are they going no is uh Arna doesn't know what to do, to be honest. Um Nau's main concern, especially at the beginning, was to shore up the alliance and not let the alliance fall apart. For the most part, that is a losing battle because without going at the top, the culture classes have gotten worse and worse. The board disagreements have gotten worse and worse. And I do have to wonder whether whether the alliance can survive or not, which it will be really bad for a no UM in terms of in terms of Carlos Gone, they have sort of been tiptoeing towards the idea that maybe there was some wrongdoing, but they haven't. They haven't really come out and laid out a set of allegations the way Nissan did. Okay, so it's still unclear. I mean, it's really complicated for the French because France is in a very anti elitist mood right now. Makran, the president is viewed as an elitist, Carlos Gone is viewed as an elitist. In a different era, it's quite possible the French would have gone, you know, to great Lance to spring him from prison, but not today. But not today, they just kind of kept their mouth shut and really didn't hasn't done much of anything, great Kelly, what's happened to him? Um? Nothing so far are which he's still in jail and no, no, no, no, no. He was. He was out on bail just as Carlos Gohne was awaiting his trial, just as Carlos Gone was. Um. There was some fear that he would be thrown back in jail as as kind of punishment or revenge for gons escape. But that does not appear to have happened, and um, you know, on the one hand, this is kind of rough for him because obviously he's not gonna he's not gonna get out of Japan anytime soon. But on the other hand, this doubles the The Japanese are going to have a really hard time saying this guy should go to jail for twenty years when the ring leader quote unquote has escaped Lebanon, So that actually may work out for him. So back to this point about how Carlos Gone was treated in prison. Tell us about the conditions first of all. Okay, so let me begin by saying that there's a there's a phrase for how the Japanese deal with people are accusing of crimes. It's called hostage justice. And the idea is that the Japanese are not looking for evidence, They're looking for confessions. And that's the way the system works. And so and that's why they have a ninety nine conviction rate because most of the time when they go to court, the persons confessed. And the way they get do you confess is you know, um eleven and twelve hours of interrogation a day, uh no lawyer present um lights on twenty four seven. Um, you know, your room is constantly cold, your your cell is constantly cold. Um. There's various other forms of you know, what you might call benign torture. In other words, they're not physically beating him, but they're making his life completely utterly miserable. And then the way the system works is that, Um, after twenty three days, they have to either let him out on bail or come up with new charges. And so what they did constantly was they would, you know, wait till the last minute, and just as he was about to be sprung from bail, they throw in new charges. So we wound up spending a total of one hundred and some odd days in prison, you know, under these conditions, under these interrogation conditions, and they're always saying to him, you know, if you ever want to see your wife again, you better confess. You know, we're going to make this much worse for you if you don't confess. It's it's it's just like you know, what you would think and think would not go on in Russia or China. And the fact that he didn't confess suggests either that he believes himself to be innocent or that he's really tough, well, son of a bit, I think it takes a lot to resist that. Yeah, I would think so too. So is there just to play devil's advocate? And I'm not arguing that people necessarily should be treated like Carloscone does. But is there any argument that in a world where many people here feel we go too easy on white color criminals and that people who do damage, but our white collar criminals get far lighter treatment than those who are, for instance, in possession of marijuana, and so is there is there any argument that that might deter the sort of happenings that we see in the US from the financial crisis to en Rondo Thranis well. I mean, I would never argue that white collar criminals should be denied new process and should be and confessions should be tried to be forced out of them. I would never argue that. To me, the issue is in the US that we don't our prosecutors have lost the nerve to indict white collar criminals, and that they and the courts, you know, various rulings in court have made it more difficult to bring white collar prosecutions. That's a lot different from from what happens in Japan. And really the outrage about what happened in Japan really had less to do with whether or not Carlos Gone had committed a crime than this kind of a new insight that, oh my god, look how their justice system operates. Right, It's like what Western country. I mean, it's not a Western country, but they have Western principles. What Western country treats prisoners like this treats and treats someone not even a prisoner, someone who's just been accused without even being found guilty in that way. Right. And so here's the other thing I was thinking about this is that, you know, one of the things that happened is that Greg Kelly gave an interview at some point to a Japanese newspaper, and he made a series of accusations about the top people at Nissan, the very people who had plotted against him and Carlos Scone. Wow, and what did he say? He said that they had padded their salaries and that they had done things. They had done the exact same sort of things that they were accusing Carlos Scone of doing. And say that again, when did he give this interview before or after he was arrested. Oh no, well, okay, I think it might have been this past summer. Okay, But anyway, that the upshot was that the CEO had to resign, that the other people involved had to resign, that they had to pay back some of the money. They were guilty and they admitted it, but they got slaps on the risk because it was apparently in the interest of Nissan that they did this. No, they got slaps on the risk because they're Japanese. That's interesting. So in other words, even that system of laws that it's in the company's interest or against the company's interest doesn't really apply. It also depends on who you are, right Well, in this particular case, that was compounded by the fact that they didn't want to put the people who were accusing Carlo's gone in prison because that were completely undercut their ability to prosecute it. So is it just a completely ridiculous idea that the justice system should function the same way for everyone, regardless of who they are. You look, that's not a ridiculous thing. But you know, that's not how the world works. I mean, it just isn't. Well, that's one of the larger implications of this story. Isn't it that that's just not how the world works. Well, it's the larger implication of the Eptein story. It was, until very recently, the larger implication of the Harvey Weinstein story. I mean, it's the larger implication of the financial crisis story. I mean, you're, you know, rich people get get top top lawyers, and they can put pressure on that other people can't. I mean, Carlos Gone didn't have that going for him, which is part of why he is, which is a large part of why he decided he had to escape because he had he had no he had no swag in Japan. So are you pro or con his escape? I mean, would you say that he saw a set of rules that he thought were unfair and so he used all the resources he could marshal to flee that set of rules and find a different set because he could. Or do you think he should have stayed to face the music in Japan because that's their system of rules, and that's I don't know what you do. I agree that he would not have gotten a fair trial in Japan, and I also believe that he was fundamentally kidnapped and so escaping for kidnappers, even though it's a government seems okay to me. On the other hand, I really do understand those who say, you know, just because you're rich, you shouldn't get to decide what jurisdiction, you know, you get prosecuted in. Right, isn't the essential problem with our world the fact that people who don't have to follow the rules, that people who can pay not to follow the rules can pay not to follow them right where every video else has to. That's exactly. And you know, you have to be very rich to pull off what he pulled off. So before we before we come back to how this all plays out, what does it mean for Nissan and renew Nothing good? Nothing good for Nissan either, No, no Nissan. If you look at Nissan's stock, it's just tumbled since he since this happened, Renee Reneau remains a very troubled company. You know, we're in a glot of autos right now. Neither company is doing all that well. China. Nissan's working really hard to uh, you know, move to electric vehicles. They have some. They have the Leaf, which is a fairly popular model. Um, but you know, the range of the Leaf doesn't even come close to a Tesla, and um, you know, I think this is a bet that's so far not particularly working well for them. You wrote this, which is great. Going has been an awful distraction for Nissan, which has costed dearly. With Going now free to defend himself and to hurl his own allegations at the company, it's only going to get worse. At this point. Nissan couldn't call a truce even even if it wanted to, and it can't win either. Nissan has to decide whether it is more interested in pursuing Going or fixing what's wrong with the company. It has already proved that it can't do both. Well. I think that's true. I think that's absolutely true. Of course I did write that, so of course you better think it's true. Right, But you know, think about it. Nissan has spent so much of the past year and a half just trying to you know, leak to the press and do this and do that, to to throw these allegations out, to to to be smirge going to I mean, they really, uh, this has kind of been their obsession. Can I ask the dumb question that I should have asked at the beginning, Why couldn't they just fire him. Why couldn't they just get the board of directors exactly exactly? If that's what's so nuts about this whole thing is I think were they afraid of him? Did they think he still had too much power on the board? Right? How do you when you when you're sick of a CEO or sick of a chairman, and even if you think he's done something wrong, you fire him. Maybe you've maybe you you you file a civil suit, you try to clawback some money. Whatever. It's not that hard, it's not that hard. It speaks to either a particular mindset among the Japanese or the fact that there must have been a lot of hatred of going brewing in those in those ranks for a long time, or maybe both. I think I think there's a third aspect of that, though, which is the going back to the governance structure, which is that n don't forget, owned fifteen percent of Nissan, right, and so it had an automatic fifteen percent for gone on the board among sheer old as if you had to have a vote to get rid of him or not. And I think they may have also feared because he's Carlos gone, and he believes in the rightness of him his cause that he would have put up a huge proxy fight and may not have just you know, lied down and crawled away. And why does it shake out that he was so valuable for Nissan? Why why can't they just rise and conquer without him? Why was this a one man show twenty years ago? They needed a visionary? Yea, they truly did. And I think maybe part of his problem Carlos Gone, is that he didn't want to be surrounded by other people who were as smart as he was, or people who were in a position to take over. So his successor, who did turn on him, but who had who he had groomed, really turned out to be a very passive and not very good CEO. Um So I think part of the part of the problem was Gone was a visionary, but he, you know, he didn't. He didn't create a culture of people who wanted to carry on that vision. And those two don't necessarily go hand in hand, right, the visionary and the person who can create the culture, right, But in fact usually they are pretty diametrically opposed if you look at history. I think it's an interesting tangent to to to all of this So what happens now to Nissan and Andrenau assuming this nothing good? But how does how does this shake out? Well, um, you know, one of two things has to happen for the for the companies. You know, either they have to get together and agree. You know, by god, we got to make this alliance work. It saves us so much money. It'll be it'll be disaster if we try to break it up, and you know, let's just put our problems, let's put our squabbles aside and get back to get back to basics. Or they will break it up and it'll be short term disastrous and I don't know what it'll mean in the long term, they'll probably boths get bought and amid all the craziness in the global automotive industry, it's that this just adds to the moving chest places. It's a terrible time for this to be happening in the in the global auto industry, especially with you know, we're in such a time of fermat and when it's really it's unclear. It's clear that electric vehicles are going to be a big deal, but it's unclear how quickly that will come, and the automobile industry has to be ready to move if it does, and these two companies are just kind of mired in their troubles. And for Going, how do you think this shakes out? Well? Actually, before we get to him, do you think Japan ever brings charges against the people who helped him escape? Uh? If they can figure out who they are, well for sure. Yeah, I do think they'll bring charges that that. I hadn't thought about that before, but yeah, that's that would so there'll be another leg to this. Yes, and for Going, does he get tried somewhere? Can he live as a fugitive forever? Um? I think it's very unlikely that he'll ever be tried, you think really? Um? Yes, Right now, he's stuck in Lebanon. He can't leave, even if he wants to. He certainly can't leave to it for any country that has an extradition treaty with Japan, Interpol has a red dot with something out. You know, he's a wanted man worldwide thanks to Interpol. So he's he's in a different kind of prison, you know, it's it's country wide. It's a country wide prison, but it's still a prison. He can't go anywhere. The Lebanese have actually taken his um, taken his passport away. So and oh, they've indicted his wife, so she can't go anywhere either. Japan has indicted his wife. Wow, Okay, so they're stuck, but at least they're stuck together. They're stuck in a country that they're very familiar with. She's Lebanese. I think he's going to be spending the next couple of years, you know, writing a book, dealing with a movie, trying to and mostly trying to clear his name. He's got he's rich, but he's not rich like he used to be. This the this between the money he spent on his defense lawyers and the money he's spent escaping. I mean, it's like in the in the tens of millions of dollars. And you know, I haven't had a chance to point this out yet, but one of Gong's frustrations was that he was being paid like a European and a Japanese executive and not like an American executive. So he was making fifteen million or whatever, when you know in the US he'd been making forty million. So there's a global competitiveness issue to this too. Or I'm rich, but I'm not as rich as they are. A relativity aspect of this, someone call that jealousy. Someone just called that jealousy. That's probably a better word, right, So that's that's interesting. So Kenny, so does he get is this a form of hell in and of itself? Then? And that this is a guy who wasn't done with the world. But if he does end up ditching a trial and staying in Lebanon, the world is done with him at some point. I think that's right. He's obviously never going to run at an auto company again. The Japanese, unless Lebanon or France decides to try to negotiate some kind of truce with Japan over this. Japanese will never drop the charges. So it's really hard to see how this works out for him in a way that gives him the freedom to go to Davos, to go to the US to find another company to run, So in a weird way, regardless of what happens the Japanese one though, they may never see it that way. They'll never see it that way never. But yeah, he's stuck. He's stuck. On that note, Thank you so much. This is a really fun conversation, and I can't wait to see the movie. I can't wait to see it either. And then, of course is the podcast. There's the podcast. There has to be a podcast. Thank you all so much for listening, Thank you Joe for coming, Thank you well. I for one can't wait to see this movie. Do you feel the same way. This story has everything money, power, the abuse of power, global intrigue, and there's an entire industry at stake. It seems to me that Carlos Gohen's time in a Japanese jail and his exile mean that he has and is going to continue to pay a price for whatever sins he has committed. Is it a high enough price? And will Renault and Nissans shareholders be the ones who ultimately pay more? Stay tuned. Thank you so much for listening to season one of Making a Killing. I hope you've enjoyed it. Follow me on Twitter at Bethany mac twelve for news about season two. Making a Killing is a co production of Pushkin Industries and Chalk and Blade. It's produced by Ruth Barnes and Laura Hyde. My executive producers are Alison mcclein. No relation in Making Casey, the executive producer at Pushkin is Mia Loebell. Engineering by Jason Rostkowski. Our music is by Jed Flood. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin and everyone on the show. I'm Bethany McLain. Thanks so much for listening. Find me on Twitter at Bethany mac twelve and let me know which episodes you've most enjoyed.