Real life Mission: Impossible — ex-auto exec escapes

Carlos Ghosn

Here today, Ghosn tomorrow.

Former Renault and Nissan executive Carlos Ghosn (rhymes with cone) pulled off a dramatic escape from Japan and ended up in Lebanon, a country where he’s a citizen.

Ghosn was arrested in Japan in 2018 for under-reporting his compensation. He spent much of the past year imprisoned. More recently, he’s been out of jail but under severe restrictions and surveillance. His lawyers in Japan had custody of his three passports (Lebanese, Brazilian and French).

Despite that, Ghosn this week arrived in Lebanon via a private aircraft. He said he was held unjustly and plans to discuss the case publicly next week. A report in Lebanon said part of the escape involved being taken out in a box meant for musical instruments after some musicians played at his Tokyo home.

For details, you can view reports in The New York Times, CNN and Reuters. (UPDATE: Reuters has an additional story saying Ghosn may have met Lebanon’s president after arriving in the country.)

The reason for bringing it up in the blog: I’ve seen mentions on social media comparing this to James Bond.

Granted (as a former co-worker of mine said years ago) Ghosn looks like he could play a James Bond villain. Another friend this week remarked this has the makings of a good movie and Rami Malek, having wrapped up work on No Time to Die, could play Ghosn.

Still, I think the better comparison is the original Mission: Impossible television series. Ghosn’s escape seems as elaborate as some of the plans devised by either Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) or Jim Phelps (Peter Graves).

The M:I pilot even had operative Willy (Peter Lupus) using cases to carrying people into a vault containing two atomic bombs.

Regardless, the world is going to be curious for some time about how Ghosn pulled off his escape from Japan.