[Aditya]

It was the fall of 2018, and Hari Nada, a high-powered Nissan executive, was afraid he might be headed to jail.

Mr. Nada had been instrumental in carrying out the financial maneuvers under investigation. He had also been instrumental in taking evidence of those maneuvers to the authorities in a secret effort to oust Mr. Ghosn.

Mr. Nada struck a plea deal, escaping prosecution for his role in one of the biggest corporate scandals in years. He remains an influential executive at Nissan, surviving a shake-up that destroyed other top executives’ careers and rocked a globe-spanning auto alliance.

He was also protected by high-ranking Nissan allies, according to almost 1,000 pages of internal corporate documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Those allies protected him despite warnings from at least 10 employees and external advisers that his actions could undermine the civil and criminal cases against Mr. Ghosn and harm Nissan’s reputation.

Mr. Nada is the star witness in a criminal trial against Nissan and Greg Kelly, Mr. Ghosn’s second-in-command and Mr. Nada’s onetime mentor. They are being tried on charges related to helping arrange undisclosed compensation for Mr. Ghosn.

Mr. Ghosn asserts that Nissan executives, including Mr. Nada, colluded with Japanese officials to oust him because they feared he would merge the company with its longtime partner Renault, the French automaker.

In 2010, Mr. Kelly instructed Mr. Nada to begin the first of a series of secret plans intended to increase Mr. Ghosn’s benefits and compensation, according to court testimony and internal Nissan documents.

Executive compensation was a perilous political issue in France, Mr. Nada testified earlier this month, and if Mr. Ghosn’s true compensation were revealed, the French government — as a major Renault shareholder — would have pushed the company to fire him.

For eight years, Mr. Nada worked “proactively and creatively” to realize Mr. Kelly’s instructions, he told the court, making arrangements to purchase homes across the globe for Mr. Ghosn’s personal use and to disguise the extent of his pay.

Mr. Nada, 56, had joined Nissan as a junior legal counsel in 1990 and was fiercely loyal to the company.

By the spring of 2018, when the investigation into Mr. Ghosn began to coalesce, Mr. Nada wielded enormous power, controlling Nissan’s legal, compliance, security and communications departments, among others. He was a top adviser to its then-chief executive, Hiroto Saikawa, and to Mr. Ghosn.

The scrutiny came at a sensitive moment: The French government was increasing pressure on Mr. Ghosn for a merger, which many Nissan executives opposed.

At trial, Mr. Nada said that he had long harbored concerns about the ethics and legality of plans to compensate Mr. Ghosn that the merger would put into force, and he had become convinced that he needed to stop them.

Mr. Nada had also privately disdained Renault and worried that he would lose power in the alliance as others were promoted past him

prosecutors said they wanted more evidence against Mr. Ghosn before taking action. They advised him to begin a secret investigation with Mr. Kawaguchi and Mr. Nada, he later told Nissan lawyers.

Mr. Nada named it Kali-10

At Mr. Nada’s recommendation, Mr. Imazu retained Nissan’s American law firm, Latham & Watkins, to conduct it.

Between 2012 and the summer of 2018, the firm had exchanged hundreds of emails with Mr. Nada regarding Nissan executives’ compensation and other issues

As the investigation began, Mr. Nada worked to protect himself through a separate channel

In mid-July, Mr. Nada instructed his personal lawyer, Akihide Kumada, to contact the prosecutors about cooperation, Mr. Nada told the court, adding that he had feared his work for Mr. Ghosn would be “mischaracterized.”

In mid-October 2018, a month before Mr. Ghosn’s detention, Takeshi Oki, a legal adviser for Nissan, emailed Latham & Watkins to say that Mr. Nada was likely to be “deemed as an accomplice” to Mr. Ghosn and should step down from the legal and audit departments.

Michael Yoshii, a Latham & Watkins partner, forwarded a translation of the email to Mr. Nada. Days later, Mr. Oki was removed by the company’s then-chief executive, who replaced him with a lawyer recommended by Mr. Kumada

By the end of October, Mr. Nada had struck a plea deal. Mr. Kumada and Latham & Watkins had helped

Working with prosecutors, Mr. Nada arranged a corporate jet to ferry Mr. Kelly from the United States to Japan for a Nissan board meeting.

Prosecutors detained Mr. Ghosn and Mr. Kelly shortly after they arrived in Japan on Nov. 19. Mr. Nada continued working on the investigation behind the scenes

Mr. Nada’s role in the investigation soon raised Renault’s hackles.

Seeking to defuse the situation, Nissan hired another law firm to review the investigation’s conclusions. It also drafted a pair of documents aimed at erecting a firewall between the inquiry and people with direct involvement in the events that precipitated it, including Mr. Nada.

Mr. Nada remained atop the investigation until April 2019, when Nissan removed him from the inquiry’s chain of command

But he continued influencing Nissan’s approach to the Ghosn case.

In August, the documents show, Mr. Nada participated in discussions about Nissan’s efforts to bring criminal charges — never realized — against Mr. Ghosn and his family in Brazil. Additionally, he approved the final wording of a settlement between Nissan and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Mr. Ghosn’s compensation; he was also a key witness in the case.

one of Nissan’s criminal defense lawyers urged the company to remove Mr. Nada’s remaining responsibilities.

Mr. Nada’s involvement in Kali-10 raised new concerns among Nissan’s legal and compliance teams as prosecutors shared their evidence with the defense teams for Mr. Ghosn and Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Yoshii, the Latham & Watkins partner, sent an email to Nissan’s legal team nominating 10 “bad documents,” almost all related to Mr. Nada’s role in the inquiry.

Around this time, Christina Murray, Nissan’s global compliance chief, was working on a project to identify and punish people suspected of involvement in additional wrongdoing by Mr. Ghosn and others.

In late August, Ms. Murray met with the company’s then-chief operating officer, Yasuhiro Yamauchi, to discuss next steps for the project. “Hari told him it was not necessary,” she wrote of the inquiry in an internal email.

Within days, she received an email from the head of Nissan’s audit committee, Motoo Nagai, removing her from investigations related to Mr. Nada.

On Sept. 9, Ms. Murray resigned. Shortly after, Ravinder Passi, Nissan’s global legal counsel, was removed from matters involving the investigation, a decision that followed his repeated attempts to raise concerns about Mr. Nada with Nissan’s directors.

The following week, news reports, including in The Times, detailed some of Mr. Nada’s conflicts of interest. Nissan removed him from the head of the legal and security departments, giving him the title “senior adviser overseeing special projects.”

At the time, Nissan said it had “found no evidence of inappropriate involvement by Nada in the internal investigation into executive misconduct.”

Kathryn Carlile, who had spent years working as Mr. Nada’s assistant, took over Mr. Passi’s responsibilities for the Ghosn investigation. She herself had worked, at Mr. Nada’s direction, on some matters covered by the Kali-10 investigation, according to the documents.

On Nov. 11, Nissan fired Mr. Passi.

Mr. Nada still occupies an office on the executive floor of the company’s headquarters in Yokohama.

Source: The New York Times

[ashis89]

Slowly but steadily, multiple skeletons are tumbling out of the closet!

Surprised to know about the extent to which Hari Nada has been shielded! If true, Hari Nada has much stronger control over Nissan than his boss. Or maybe there's lot more dirt hiding in the books which others are trying to protect.

OT:
With the story disclosed so far, a few movies could be made on the whole episode and some spin-offs too. I read somewhere there's a movie WIP on Carlos Ghosn.

Edit: The more I thought of it, the more it felt like a mole/undercover agent doing their best to bring down the structure

[Axe77]

The muck really runs deep here. And speaking of movies, yeah - there’s enough material for a Netflix multiple season series, let alone a movie. With innumerable parallel plots.

[GTO]

This Hari Nada fellow appears to be a real shady, slimy chameleon. I've read up on him earlier too, and this brilliant NYT article only strengthens my impressions.

Sure was lucky to have been part of the conspiracy, but getting out by turning into an informant. This guy + Carlos Ghosn + his lieutenants stole from Nissan and there is no doubt on that. Theft is theft, whether by a pickpocket or a CEO like Ghosn. Am glad they have either been jailed and / or lost their careers & reputation. Well deserved.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by GTO

This Hari Nada fellow appears to be a real shady, slimy chameleon. I've read up on him earlier too, and this brilliant NYT article only strengthens my impressions.

Agree on this. First be a partner in crime. However, at the first sign of trouble, you turn on the ones you were assisting in the first place. Seems to show greater loss of character than the ones he turned on.

[AZT]

Originally Posted by GTO

This guy + Carlos Ghosn + his lieutenants stole from Nissan and there is no doubt on that. Theft is theft, whether by a pickpocket or a CEO like Ghosn.

There's a lot more to this case. Ghosn probably became the fall guy for a much bigger plot which was in essence the Japanese govt not wanting Renault to take over Nissan. One of the reasons he escaped was Japan's flawed legal system which once it decides to pursue you, has a 99.3% conviction rate.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47113189

[mohansrides]

Originally Posted by GTO

This Hari Nada fellow appears to be a real shady, slimy chameleon.

Originally Posted by benbsb29

... First be a partner in crime. However, at the first sign of trouble, you turn on the ones you were assisting in the first place. ...

With some exceptions, the age pyramid of Team BHP membership skews towards the very young. So, this Nissan saga seems quite appalling to most people.

Truth is that if you have spent many decades slogging it out in the corporate cubicles, then you will realise that there are many many Hari Nadas in this world. These guys (and gals) are great survivors. They instinctively know which way the wind is blowing and consequently they know how to survive, and to even prosper. In fact, if you want to climb the ladder, this is par for the course in most multinational matrix orgs.

My belief is that if you dig deep into anyone who has ascended the ladder, or has even survived for decades in executive positions in the turbulent waters of big multinational orgs, you will find one consistent trait. Such people are always on the victorious side of various internal corporate battles. The funny thing is that the corporate bigwigs who these survivors had backed in those battles may actually burn out after several battles. But these survivors themselves will keep moving forward by uncannily finding the next victorious horse to back. That’s the name of the game.

Integrity, strength of conviction, transparency, and trust; these are all just buzzwords on published mission statements and on LinkedIn profiles. In the real world, these words and phrases have no place except for maybe in one’s personal life with friends and family.

I would have never said this even a decade ago. But I don’t even believe in right and wrong anymore. Today I think there is only what is right right now, and what is wrong right now. Who knows how those values will get defined down the road!!

Cheers

[laser2707]

Ever since this sordid saga blew up, there is a stink about Nissan & its operations at the highest executive level.

The latest revelations only add to the suspicions. I will not speculate on what are the causes. However it is clear there is a coterie who will go to any extent to maintain status quo. As a detached observer it is clear a full merger with Renault would have exposed this coterie & whatever they are trying to suppress.

So as collateral damage they are willing to jail their CEO, spend over USD 200 million in a court battle, suffer a PR disaster & watch their market cap plummet to all time lows. In such a scenario, I wonder about the shareholders. They are the epitome of patience as they look on passively at the systematic gutting of this company.

[Crank]

Though it looks like dirty power struggle on the outset, it also looks like supremacy of regional heads in Japan, for which Nada is been used, who doesn't want Nissan to become subdued to Renault.

Nada and Saikawa calculated that the Japanese government had no desire to see Nissan become swallowed up in a sprawling holding company. They, in turn, targeted Team Ghosn for removal, the people said.

Ghosn fleeing from japan in a speaker case, adds more masala to the story. Expecting a movie on this sooner.

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2...n-nada-nissan/

[ajmat]

How does Nada win?

He got out of jail but no one in Nissan will ever trust him, he did dirty stuff and did the dirty on his bosses. Most US company would offer him something and tell him to get out quietly. Hari will never be trusted even in a new role elsewhere,

[FINTAIL]

Originally Posted by ajmat

How does Nada win?

He's 56 anyway, pretty high up the chain in one of the biggest global manufacturing corporations.

Chances of him jumping ship to say, Ford or someplace are pretty rare, no?

This guy will survive with a pretty big paycheck for about the next decade or so.