According to Nissan, it investigated what was alleged on a whistleblower report involving Ghosn and Representative Director Greg Kelly. “The investigation showed that over many years both Ghosn and Kelly have been reporting compensation amounts in the Tokyo Stock Exchange securities report that were less than the actual amount, in order to reduce the disclosed amount of Carlos Ghosn’s compensation,” read the Nissan statement.
The carmaker also said that CEO Hiroto Saikawa would push for a proposal to the Nissan board to remove both Ghosn and Kelly.
The news of misconduct broke sending shockwaves since it was outed as Ghosn who was responsible for saving Nissan from near bankruptcy and turning it around. He also serves as chairman and chief executive of French car giant Renault (Paris: RENA). The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Motors is listed in Tokyo under the ticker 7211.
This is the third bad news to hit Nissan as of recent times.
Japan’s second-largest automaker, back in June, said that it identified slip-ups in the emission and fuel economy inspections, which weren’t in line with the regulatory standards. Nissan also added that the data updated in its inspection records were falsified. The “misconduct” was found across all its Japanese plants except Nissan Motor Kyushu. Shares of the firm then plunged nearly 5% in the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Then, in September 2017, Japanese regulators unearthed that the final inspection dubbed as “kanken” was performed by employees who aren’t qualified to do so, resulting in recalling nearly 1.2 million cars last year. The company also has to stop new vehicle registrations briefly until it fixed the kanken process.