Greg Kelly was found guilty of helping former Nissan CEO Carlos Gon to hide his pay from financial regulators.
A Tokyo court on Thursday sentenced Greg Kelly, a former executive director of Nissan Motor, for helping former CEO Carlos Gon to hide the pay he was supposed to reveal to financial regulators.
In a court ruling, the judge told Kelly that he helped Gon hide about 9.3 billion yen ($ 80 million) in payments that had not been disclosed in the financial statements for a decade.
The judge found that Kelly was unaware of all the 9.3 billion yen ($ 80.46 million) hidden payments during the period, blaming Toshiaki Onuma, an official who monitors Gon’s compensation details, for some of the erroneous reports. Onuma, who was a key prosecution witness, was not tried in exchange for his cooperation.
“The court finds there is unpaid remuneration” and non-disclosure of the “total amount” constitutes “false” reporting, Kelly’s judge told the court.
The judge sentenced the former American executive director of Nissan to six months in prison, suspended for three years. The ruling means Kelly, who has the right to appeal, will be able to return to the United States immediately.
“Although it was a long three years for the Kelly family, this chapter is over. He and Dee (his wife) can start their next chapter in Tennessee, “said US Ambassador to Japan Ram Emmanuel in a statement.
Kelly’s legal team claimed during the Tokyo District Court trial that Kelly was looking for legal ways to pay Gon to stop him from leaving for a competitor.
Prosecutors have demanded that Kelly be sentenced to two years in prison. They claim that Gon, Kelly and Nissan did not include Gon’s compensation in the submitted documents for eight years until 2018.
The verdict – at the end of an 18-month trial and more than three years after his arrest along with Gon – may be the closest a Japanese court will decide on the former Nissan boss’s guilt.
Gon, who has declared his innocence and sharply criticized the Japanese judiciary for its near-perfect sentencing rate, is beyond the reach of Japanese prosecutors after fleeing to Lebanon in 2019, hidden in a box on a private plane.