Former Nissan director Greg Kelly tears up after return from Ghosn odyssey in Japan

As ambassador, Hagerty helped arrange delivery of warm clothes to Kelly during his December lockup in a cold Tokyo jail and helped expedite his release on bail for neck surgery, Kelly said.

“Words can’t really adequately describe how grateful we are for everything he has done for us,” Kelly said of Hagerty, who left the Tokyo diplomatic mission in 2019 to run for the Senate in 2020.

Kelly, 65, went on to describe the allegations against him as an internal corporate matter than Nissan should have handled in the board room, not by going to prosecutors.

“My prosecution was a direct result of a coup engineered by a few senior Japanese executives to oust Carlos Ghosn, because they didn’t want Renault, a French car company, to merge with Nissan,” Kelly said. “It was an issue that should have been resolved by Nissan’s board.”

After a 17-month trial before the Tokyo District Court, Kelly was found guilty March 3 of aiding Ghosn, the former Chairman of Nissan and Renault, during just one of eight years under scrutiny by prosecutors. Kelly was cleared of any wrongdoing in the other seven years.

A three-judge panel gave Kelly a six-month suspended sentence.

Under the terms of Kelly’s suspended sentence, the Tennessee lawyer and former human resources executive was allowed to return to the U.S.

Kelly’s defense team has filed an appeal against the guilty verdict, insisting on full vindication for their client. Meanwhile, Tokyo prosecutors are weighing their own appeal.

The appeals process is expected to last another year.

“The judge ruled in our favor on everything except for one minor issue,” Kelly said, adding that he essentially “won” the case. “And we’ll appeal that.”

Prosecutors accused Ghosn and Kelly of hiding some 9.3 billion yen ($80.5 million) in postponed compensation from 2010 to 2018. Both men, arrested the same day in 2018, deny wrongdoing.

But after Ghosn fled Japan for Lebanon in 2019, Kelly was left to fight the charges alone.