But they boiled over as Mr Ghosn sought, at the French government’s behest, to make the alliance “irreversible”. Nissan read this as code for a full merger that would cement Gallic dominance. This, claims Mr Ghosn, led some in Nissan to manufacture charges in order to get rid of him. Nissan’s version is that he was a greedy tyrant who regarded the Japanese firm as a personal bank account. This claim gained more credence when French prosecutors also began an investigation of Mr Ghosn, including into the funding of a lavish party thrown for his wife’s birthday at the palace of Versailles—a far cry from his Japanese prison cell, where a bowl of rice gruel counted as luxury.

The authors point to a clash of corporate cultures as the reason he may have sought to circumvent pay disclosure using a deferred-pay scheme, which Nissan claimed broke the law. In Japan and France ceos are paid far less than equivalent American bosses; doubtless he thought his skills should be properly rewarded by global standards. The competing narratives were never aired in court, though, after Japan’s criminal-justice system—which relies on prolonged incarceration and intense interrogation to obtain a confession—collided with Mr Ghosn’s stubborn refusal to admit any wrongdoing. Eventually released on bail, he fled in the belief that he would not receive a fair trial and would remain under house arrest for years.

Some readers may be dismayed by the authors’ reluctance to speculate on the verdict should the trial have gone ahead (they conclude that, given the “arcane” accusations of financial irregularities, a “ruling is likely to be just as abstruse”). But the end result is that Mr Ghosn remains trapped, these days in Lebanon, where he is safe from the international arrest warrants that might be executed should he board any more corporate jets. Meanwhile the alliance he created, languishing without its leader, may yet break apart.

译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。