CANBERRA ¨C On Nov. 19, Carlos Ghosn, the board chair and former CEO of Nissan, was arrested at Tokyo¡¯s Haneda airport on suspicion of under-reporting income and misusing corporate funds for personal purposes; he remains in custody. Less than two weeks later, Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and daughter of its founder, was arrested in transit at Vancouver¡¯s airport on charges by the United States that Huawei had violated U.S. sanctions against Iran; out on bail, she now awaits an extradition hearing.
These two cases are technically unrelated. But both underscore an important truth: In a globalized world, domestic legal processes can have major international repercussions.
Ghosn¡¯s arrest put Japan¡¯s justice system on trial in the court of world opinion. In fact, Japan lacks many of the elements of due process found in Anglo-American jurisprudence, such as the right to have a lawyer present during questioning. As a leading Japanese criminal defense attorney, Makoto Endo, put it, Japan¡¯s criminal justice system operates on the premise of ¡°guilty until proven guilty.¡±
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