For a guy with a magic touch around multiple car companies, reversing losses of $6 billion a year to profit of 3 billion a year, his story just doesn't make sense - his compensation should be much more than they're questioning initially some of $18mill for private residences in different country. Why would the new CEO arrest him, rather than hold a quiet internal review?

(Wikipedia) Renault–Nissan Alliance

In March 1999, Renault and Nissan formed the Renault–Nissan Alliance, and in May 1999 Renault purchased a 36.8% stake in Nissan.[65] While maintaining his roles at Renault, Ghosn joined Nissan as its chief operating officer (COO) in June 1999, became its president in June 2000, and was named chief executive officer (CEO) in June 2001.[46] When he joined the company, Nissan had a consolidated interest-bearing net automotive debt of more than $20 billion (more than 2 trillion yen),[55][66] and only three of its 46 models sold in Japan were generating a profit.[67] Reversing the company's sinking fortunes was considered nearly impossible.[68][69][70][71]

Ghosn's "Nissan Revival Plan", announced in October 1999, called for a return to profitability in fiscal year 2000, a profit margin in excess of 4.5% of sales by the end of fiscal year 2002, and a 50% reduction in the current level of debt by the end of fiscal year 2002.[72][73][74] Ghosn promised to resign if these goals were not met.[75] Ghosn's Nissan Revival Plan called for cutting 21,000 Nissan jobs (14% of total workforce), mostly in Japan; shutting five Japanese plants; reducing the number of suppliers and shareholdings; and auctioning off prized assets such as Nissan's aerospace unit.[72][76][77]

Ghosn was the fourth non-Japanese person to lead a Japanese automaker, after Mark Fields, Henry Wallace, and James Miller were appointed by Ford to run Mazda in the late 1990s.[78] In addition to cutting jobs, plants, and suppliers, Ghosn spearheaded major and dramatic structural and corporate-culture changes at Nissan. He defied Japanese business etiquette in various ways, including by eliminating seniority-based and age-based promotion, by changing lifetime employment from a guarantee to a desired goal for when the company achieved high performance, and by dismantling Nissan's keiretsu system – an interwoven web of parts suppliers with cross-holdings in Nissan.[79][80][81] When the Nissan Revival Plan was announced, the proposed dismantling of keiretsu earned Ghosn the nickname "keiretsu killer",[82] and The Wall Street Journal quoted a Dresdner Kleinwort Benson analyst in Tokyo as saying Ghosn might become a "target of public outrage" if Nissan threw former affiliates out of its supply chain.[83][84] Ghosn changed Nissan's official company language from Japanese to English, and included executives from Europe and North America in key global strategy sessions for the first time.[85][86]

In the first year of the Nissan Revival Plan, Nissan's consolidated net profit after tax climbed to $2.7 billion for fiscal year 2000,[87] from a consolidated net loss of $6.46 billion in the previous year.[88] Twelve months into his three-year turnaround plan, Nissan had returned to profitability, and within three years it was one of the industry's most profitable auto makers, with operating margins consistently above 9%—more than twice the industry average.[89] The goals of the Nissan Revival Plan were all reached before March 31, 2002.[90]

In May 2002, Ghosn announced his next set of goals for the company, "Nissan 180", a three-year plan for growth based on the numbers 1, 8, and 0: By the end of September 2005, Nissan planned to increase its global sales by one million vehicles; and by the spring of 2005, it was committed to achieving an operating margin of at least 8% and reducing its net automotive debt to zero.[91][92] These goals were all reached:[93] In the spring of 2003, Nissan announced that its net automotive debt was eliminated in fiscal year 2002.[94][95] Nissan's operating profit margin climbed to 11.1% in fiscal year 2003;[96] it had been 1.4% in fiscal year 1999.[97] In October 2005, Nissan announced that its annual sales from September 30, 2004, to September 30, 2005, were more than 3.67 million, up from the 2.6 million vehicles sold in the fiscal year ended March 2002.[98][99]

Ghosn at Datsun Go launch in New Delhi, India (2013)

In May 2005, Ghosn was named president and chief executive officer of Renault.[46] When he assumed the CEO roles at both Renault and Nissan, Ghosn became the world's first person to run two companies on the Fortune Global 500 simultaneously.[100]

In 2005, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian acquired a 9.9% stake in General Motors (GM) and seated one of his representatives on the company's board, then urged GM to investigate a merger with Renault and Nissan with Ghosn as the new chairman of GM. In 2006, GM's embattled management rebuffed the takeover attempt, and by the end of the year, Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. sold most of its GM stock.[101]

In 2006, Ford Motor Co. made Ghosn a formal offer to lead the company, according to the book American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by Bryce Hoffman.[102] Ghosn refused, reportedly saying the only way he would come to the struggling company was if he was named both the CEO and chairman of the board. Bill Ford Jr. refused to give up his chairmanship.[103]

Carlos Ghosn at Nissan's Honmoku Wharf, a logistics hub about 10 km southeast of Nissan's global headquarters in Yokohama, July 2011

In 2007, Ghosn led the Renault–Nissan Alliance into the mass-market zero-emission electric car market in a major way, and committed €4 billion (more than $5 billion) to the effort.[104][105][106][107] In 2008, he confirmed that Nissan–Renault would bring an "entire lineup" of zero-emission electric cars to the worldwide market by 2012.[108][109] In 2009, he told the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, "If you're going to let developing countries have as many cars as they want—and they're going to have as many cars as they want one way or another—there is no absolutely alternative but to go for zero emissions. And the only zero-emissions vehicle available today is electric ... So we decided to go for it."[110] The Nissan Leaf, an electric car billed as "the world's first affordable zero-emission car",[111][112] debuted in December 2010.[105][113] As of 2017, the Renault–Nissan Alliance is the world's electric vehicle leader, selling more than double the number of electric cars as Tesla, and the Nissan Leaf is the world's best-selling electric vehicle by a wide margin.[114]

Ghosn was a visible leader in recovery efforts after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.[115] On March 29, 2011, he made the first of several visits to the hard-hit Iwaki engine plant in Fukushima prefecture, 50 km (31 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,[116][117][118] and at his direction Nissan restored full operations at the Iwaki factory well ahead of expectations.[119][120][121] He appeared on television in Japan to encourage optimism.[118][122][123][124] In May 2011, Ghosn remained committed to building at least 1 million of Nissan's cars and trucks in Japan annually.[125]