Ex-head of Nissan Carlos Ghosn has been summoned for questioning at a prosecutor's office in Lebanon on Thursday, the state-run National News Agency reported.
The prosecutor, Attorney General Ghassan Oueidat, said Ghosn was summoned due to a "red notice" issued by a court in Japan for the former CEO of Nissan and Renault.
Earlier, Lebanese lawyers filed a complaint about Ghosn's travel to Israel more than 10 years ago when he was chief of the company. Ghosn apologised to Lebanese citizens earlier in the day for travelling to Israel in 2008, saying that he was there on a business trip.
Since April 2019, Ghosn has been under house arrest in Japan on accusations of financial crimes. However, he managed to flee his house in Tokyo which was supposedly under 24-hour surveillance and escape to Osaka International Airport in a bullet train. There, he boarded a private jet with the help of two US nationals and left the country in an Audio Gear musical instrument box, reports said.
In November 2018, Ghosn, now 65, was arrested in Tokyo over allegations of dramatically under-reporting his earnings while at the helm of Nissan and misusing company assets.
Ghosn has denied any wrongdoing on his side and claimed he escaped what he described as a "rigged Japanese justice system". He said executives at Nissan feared he was planning on a full-on merger with France's Renault.
Japanese authorities blasted Ghosn for attacks on the country's legal system saying they are "intolerable" and "false".
Japan's minister of justice, Mori Masko, issues a statement blasting Carlos Ghosn: "He has been propagating both within Japan and internationally false information on Japan's legal system and its practice. That is absolutely intolerable."
— Nathan Bomey (@NathanBomey) January 8, 2020
