Tokyo, Nissan Motor has booked 9.2 billion yen ($83.24 million) in charges related to under-reported compensation to the company’s ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn, the current President and CEO of the Japanese automobile manufacturer said on Tuesday.
Ghosn is currently in prison charged with underreporting his income for eight years.
Nissan President and CEO Hiroto Saikawa, speaking at a press conference where he presented the company’s financial results for the last nine months of 2018, said the figures involving Ghosn were a conservative estimate, according to Efe news.
The carmaker also cut its full-year profit forecast as sales weakened.
Nissan decided to take into account these alleged payments accorded with Ghosn despite still not having settled the amount, which could vary, depending on the results of the investigations of the public prosecutor’s office and the authorities to determine the exact sum, according to the the firm’s Chief Financial Officer Hiroshi Karube.
Ghosn has been in prison in Tokyo since November 19 after Nissan accused him of not declaring a part of his income between 2011 and 2018.
The 64-year-old is also accused of having violated a Japanese business regulation by using Nissan to cover a series of personal financial losses during the 2008 crisis and of making allegedly unjustified payments to a Saudi businessman.
Nissan replaced Ghosn with Saikawa as President. Renault soon followed suit, replacing him with Jean-Dominique Senard as President.
Senard is scheduled to visit Tokyo this week to meet Saikawa, who on Tuesday reiterated his willingness to work with the French executive.
Saikawa said that he hoped to discuss and revise the existing Renault-Nissan and Mitsubishi alliance.
He said first he wanted to create trust and good communications between their operational teams, while also underlining the need to avoid granting excessive power to the leader of the alliance.
On being asked about his responsibility in the alleged irregularities by Ghosn, whom he worked with for a decade, Saikawa said he and other executives felt responsible for not having discovered it or not having stopped it.
The CEO of the Japanese company said they had to secure the future of their firm and the need to focus on managing the current situation and chart Nissan’s course.
