Former Renault boss Carlos Ghosn will not be entitled to his “cap retirement” of 775,000 euros, according to a decision by the Court of Cassation consulted Tuesday by AFP. After his arrest in Japan in November 2018, and his incredible flight to Lebanon, Carlos Ghosn went to court to claim his rights to a “cap pension”, these “super-complementary” pensions financed solely by the company, a gross amount of 774,774 euros per year.
The businessman believed he had been forced to “put an end to his mandates” to allow Renault to operate, given his arrest. But Renault saw his departure as a resignation, and not a retirement, which canceled his retirement rights. Carlos Ghosn lost before the Nanterre commercial court, then on appeal in Paris in December 2021. In a decision rendered on December 20, 2023, the Court of Cassation confirmed the previous decisions, L’argus de l’assurance said on Tuesday .
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According to the Court, “the beneficiary of a supplementary pension with defined benefits with random rights has no acquired right to receive this supplementary pension as long as his retirement pension rights have not been liquidated and he has not been established that he meets the condition of completing his career within the company.
Carlos Ghosn was arrested at the end of 2018 in Japan where he was to be tried for alleged financial embezzlement when he was head of the Renault-Nissan group. Carlos Ghosn, 69, proclaims his innocence and denounces from Beirut a “plot” hatched, according to him, by Nissan with the support of the Japanese government, to bring him down and thus avoid a closer union with Renault.
The Franco-Lebanese-Brazilian businessman is the subject of three arrest warrants: the first in Japan for financial embezzlement; a second in Nanterre (near Paris) for misuse of corporate assets and organized gang money laundering, in connection with the Omani distributor Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA). A third warrant was issued in Paris in July 2023 for corruption and abuse of corporate assets: the investigating judges suspect him of having had 900,000 euros paid via a Renault subsidiary to the lawyer and politician Rachida Dati, who has since become Minister of Culture, to hide lobbying activity in the European Parliament while she was a Member of Parliament there.