The case weighs him down. In 2010, Kelly Mr. Nada ordered to launch the first of a series of secret plans to increase Ghosn’s benefits and compensation, according to court testimony and internal Nissan documents.
Executive compensation was a dangerous political issue in France, said Mr. Nada testified earlier this month. As mnr. Ghosn’s real compensation would have turned out if the French government – as a major shareholder in Renault – had pressured the company to fire him.
Mr. Nada, 56, joined Nissan in 1990 as a junior legal adviser and was very loyal to the company. He started his career in Britain and by 2010 became a senior manager.
He did his job for Mr. Ghosn kept secret, he wrote in a draft statement to prosecutors judged by The Times, in part because Mr. Kelly convinced him that his boss, in his position as head of the alliance, was a critical bulwark against the French government’s ambition for Renault to take over Nissan, its junior partner.
For eight years, Mr. Nada worked “proactively and creatively” following the instructions of Mr. Kelly, he told the court and made arrangements to buy homes around the world for Mr. Ghosn’s personal use and to disguise the extent of his payment.
His career progressed rapidly. By the spring of 2018, when the investigation into Mr. Ghosn is starting to flow together, Mr. Nada exercised enormous power and controlled, among other things, Nissan’s departments of law, compliance, safety and communications. He was a leading adviser to the then CEO, Hiroto Saikawa, and to Mr. Ghosn.
According to the documents, Mr. For years, Nada has had questions from both internal and external auditors about his work for Mr. Ghosn repelled. But in 2018, a Nissan whistleblower complained about travel expenses for Mr. Ghosn’s family at a company auditor, Hidetoshi Imazu. The issue, Mr. Imazu later told Nissan attorneys, urged him to take up the case of Mr. Ghosn to investigate, including one of the mysterious companies that Mr. Nada erected to acquire properties.