Carlos Ghosn, one of the auto industry’s most powerful leaders, lost another title on Monday when the board of Mitsubishi Motors removed him as chairman, one week after he was arrested in Tokyo on suspicion of financial misconduct.
Mr. Ghosn, who was stripped of the chairmanship of Nissan last week in a unanimous vote of the board, remains in a Tokyo detention center, where he sees his lawyer for about an hour or so each day. He is being questioned by prosecutors after Nissan said that he underreported his income to Japanese regulators over several years. He has not been charged with any crime.
In a statement on Monday, Osamu Masuko, chief executive of Mitsubishi, said the board had removed Mr. Ghosn because “he lost the trust of Nissan, and he cannot execute his duties as chairman and representative director any longer.”
Mr. Masuko added that if Mr. Ghosn remained as chairman, it could expose Mitsubishi to “reputation risk.”
It has been a remarkably swift fall from grace for Mr. Ghosn. He has long been admired in Japan, where Nissan employs more than 22,000 people and Mitsubishi employs more than 30,000. He was known as the man who rescued Nissan, becoming one of his generation’s most successful chief executives as he orchestrated an alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi that effectively made the group the world’s largest seller of cars.
The full story, by Motoko Rich, can be found at nytimes.com
