ISTANBUL – A Turkish court convicted a director of the Turkish jet company MNG and two pilots for migrant smuggling for their role in flying former Nissan Motor Co Ltd chairman Carlos Ghosn out of Japan during his escape to Lebanon just over a year ago.
The court sentenced them to four years and two months in prison, although their lawyer said they were not expected to serve a prison term because they had been held for several months.
Two other pilots and a flight attendant were acquitted, while charges against another flight attendant were dropped.
Ghosn, once a leading light in the global auto industry, was arrested in Japan in late 2018 and charged with underreporting his salary and using company funds for personal purposes, allegations he denies.
The deposed chairman of the alliance of Renault, Nissan Motor Co and Mitsubishi Motors Corp was awaiting trial under house arrest in Japan when he escaped via Istanbul to Beirut, his childhood home, in December 2019.
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Ghosn, who is of French, Lebanese and Brazilian nationality, is still a fugitive and resides in Beirut, where he announced several months ago that he was launching a university business program. Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Japan.
An executive of Turkish private jet operator MNG Jet and four pilots were detained by Turkish authorities in early January 2020 and charged with migrant smuggling.
The attorney for one of the convicted pilots, Erem Yucel, told reporters they would appeal the verdict.
Convicted pilot Noyan Pasin said the staff and officials had not suspected that there was anything wrong with the flight, neither in Japan nor Turkey, so it was wrong to get the pilots out.
“We were expected to be suspicious and we were convicted for not being suspicious,” he told reporters.
The defendants were released in July, when the first hearing took place, and are not expected to return to prison because of the time they were serving. Japan is not known to have requested extradition in order to be charged there.
The Ghosn saga has shaken the global auto industry, at one point compromised the Renault-Nissan alliance, of which he had the brains, and increased control of the Japanese legal system.
Renault and Nissan are struggling to restore profitability after his tenure, in which both carmakers say Ghosn is too focused on increasing sales and market share.