TOKYO -- Then-Nissan Motor Chairman Carlos Ghosn treated as "sales promotional costs" roughly $14.7 million paid to a Saudi associate as part of an alleged scheme to shift private investment losses to the automaker, sources told Nikkei on Sunday.
Ghosn is suspected to have transferred the $14.7 million from Dubai-based Nissan Middle East, which oversees the automaker's operations in that region, to a bank account of a company operated by the acquaintance in four installments from June 2009 to March 2012. As then-CEO of Nissan, Ghosn apparently used the automaker's discretionary "CEO reserve."
