Why Carlos Ghosn may come out of this mess looking a lot better than Nissan

A prediction: l’affaire Carlos Ghosn is not going to end well for the Japanese. Yes, that’s right: I’m convinced that Ghosn, the former chairman of Nissan Motor Co. who was arrested Nov. 19 on suspicion of underreporting his compensation, is going to come out of this looking a lot better than either the Japanese prosecutors who arrested him or the Japanese automaker that so plainly turned on him.

Let’s start with the prosecutors. Seventeen days after his arrest, Ghosn remains confined to a small cell. Prosecutors interrogate for hours at a time, urging him to confess his crimes. Occasionally, his Japanese