Ex-Nissan exec Kelly found guilty of underreporting Ghosn pay
Baku, March 3, AZERTAC
Former Nissan Motor Co. executive Greg Kelly was given a six-month suspended prison sentence on Thursday for helping former CEO Carlos Ghosn underreport his remuneration for fiscal 2017, but a Tokyo court acquitted him of all other counts over its financial reports covering the previous seven years, according to Kyodo News.
The Tokyo District Court found the former Nissan representative director guilty, handing him the sentence, suspended for three years, for falsifying the automaker's financial report for the year ended March 2018.
The ruling, seen as an effective defeat for prosecutors, has set the stage for the American lawyer to return home from Japan after he was arrested more than three years ago. The prosecutors had sought 2 years of imprisonment for Kelly, who was Ghosn's right-hand man.
Kelly will appeal the suspended sentence, with his team of lawyers saying he is "completely innocent." In a statement in Japanese, Kelly said he was "shocked" to hear the ruling and "cannot understand why the court convicted him on just one year."
"I have consistently acted in the best interests of Nissan and there is no fact at all that I have been involved in an unlawful act," he said.
The court ordered Japan's third-largest automaker to pay fines of 200 million yen ($1.7 million), the same amount that prosecutors had demanded, for submitting inaccurate financial statements for fiscal 2011 through 2017 to regulators.
Kelly, 65, was accused of conspiring with Ghosn in understating his remuneration by around 9 billion yen over eight years through March 2018, violating Japan's financial instruments and exchange law.
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