Carlos Ghosn decided to walk out of a recent interview with public German broadcaster DW.
The interview was conducted by the world-renowned TV journalist Tim Sebastian, who hosts the DW’s “Conflict Zone” program that goes by the slogan “Confronting the Powerful.”
During the interview, Ghosn was disgruntled by a question pointing out that he had been allowed to talk to the press following his arrest in Japan in 2018.
“If you consider that I was given the chance to talk to the press, you are in bad faith… I’d been denied any possibility to talk, and you know it, and if you ask the question, that mean[s] you’re in bad faith,” Ghosn, speaking from Beirut, told host Tim Sebastian.
He continued, “And if you’re in bad faith, we stop the discussion here,” before going on to talk about his time in Japanese custody.
“For 14 months, I was forbidden to talk to my wife, I was forbidden to see my family. When I wanted to organize a press conference in Japan, I was re-arrested.”
He added that after he’d been freed a second time, he was told by the prosecution that he was free to talk but that they would also be free to bring new charges.
Ghosn addressed the interviewer again, saying: “If you consider that I was free to talk, frankly, I consider that you have not a minimum of good faith.”
Before Sebastian could finish asking the next question, Carlos Ghosn got up from his chair and left the interview, saying, “We will stop it here.”
Since his arrival in Beirut in 2019 after escaping the Japanese judiciary, Ghosn, who is wanted by Interpol, has been working on clearing his name.
Through the numerous interviews and public statements he has made over the months, the 67-year-old businessman has maintained his innocence of the charges he had faced in Japan, repeatedly arguing that his arrest was the outcome of a plot against him.
He recently defended himself in Beirut before French judges, in a process he deemed the first “fair” treatment he had received since his time in Japan.
