Like Marie-Antoinette, Carlos Ghosn’s troubles escalated after a round of extravagant parties at the Palace of Versailles.
When the former Nissan boss and international fugitive married his second wife Carole Nahas Marshi in 2016, he organized a sumptuous soiree for 120 guests at the sprawling 17th century chateau on the outskirts of Paris that was once home to the ill-fated last queen of France.
Guests in black tie and sweeping gowns gathered for the lavish banquet that also doubled as Carole’s 50th birthday celebration. They dined on Limoges china and drank vintage wine from Ghosn’s own Ixsir vineyard in Lebanon. The four-foot wedding cake was a pyramid of choux pastry draped with fondant white flowers. Antique tables overflowed with pastel-colored macaroons, strawberries and grapes as guests mingled with costumed actors in powdered pompadour wigs.
“We wanted it to feel as if we were inviting guests into our home — nothing too studied,” Carole Ghosn told “Town and Country,” which featured photos of the sultry blonde in a striking green taffeta gown adorned with gold flowers by Paris designer Rabih Kayrouz.
“When you invite people to a party, they say maybe,” said Carole, a Lebanese-born New Yorker. “When you invite them to Versailles, they will come.”
Carole Ghosn spoke from experience, for the wedding was the second time the couple entertained at Versailles. The first was in 2014 when Ghosn personally invited 160 people to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the alliance between Nissan and Renault. But the March 9th dinner, which was catered by celebrity French chef Alain Ducasse and featured an elaborate fireworks display, coincided with Ghosn’s 60th birthday, and not the March 27th birth of the joint venture in 1999.
Most of the guests at the Louis XIV-inspired dinner were friends of the couple from around the world, according to French press reports. Only a handful of attendees were employees of the car giants, according to BFM TV in France, which obtained the exclusive guest list. Following the festivities, a 28-page photo album was emailed to all guests, and a professionally shot video of the soiree was produced.
“As usual, I count on your total discretion on this event,” warned the last line of Ghosn’s invitation.
Long known as “Le Cost Cutter” in France, the maverick executive had been credited with saving the car companies he oversaw from bankruptcy, largely by ruthlessly slashing jobs, cutting expenses and streamlining operations.
At more than $700,000, the price-tag of the Versailles party would prove awkward as a corporate expense, and questions would also arise in France about who paid for the extravagant wedding reception/birthday party for his wife.
In November 2018, Japanese authorities charged Ghosn with diverting company funds for his own benefit and underreporting his income in the tens of millions of dollars — his salary and stock options totaled $17 million in 2017.
Two weeks ago, he escaped to Lebanon in an instrument case from Japan where he was on bail awaiting trial. Among the issues that seemed to bother his Nissan bosses most were the images of a tuxedoed Ghosn happily greeting guests at the Gallery of Great Battles, the Versailles Palace’s grandest room where 15 centuries of French military victories are depicted on its walls.
Carlos Ghosn, 65, wasn’t always so rich or extravagant.
His family has humble roots in the Brazilian Amazon where his grandfather, Bichara Ghosn, first settled as a 13-year-old, illiterate emigrant from Lebanon. The elder Ghosn went in search of El Dorado in the outback region, and took on a series of odd jobs in Porto Velho on the Madeira River, a tributary of the Amazon, where many Syrian and Lebanese immigrants settled in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although he soon made a good living in Brazil’s aviation industry, Bichara Ghosn, a Maronite Christian, always longed to re-establish himself in his beloved native country.
“The Maronites who emigrated have maintained their loyalty to Lebanon and to their family members who stayed in the old country,” wrote Carlos Ghosn in his 2003 book “Shift: Inside Nissan’s Historic Revival.” “They send money. They pay to construct a house in their ancestral village and visit it from time to time.”
Ghosn would follow his grandfather’s example, investing heavily in a winery and other real estate ventures in Lebanon — a decision that would end up saving his life after he launched his dramatic escape from Tokyo to Beirut at the end of last year.
Ghosn was born in Porto Velho on March 9, 1954, but after a childhood illness, his mother moved him to “the old country” where he studied at an elite Jesuit school in Beirut. After high school, Ghosn left for Paris where he enrolled at a prestigious engineering school and met his first wife Rita Kordahi, a pharmacy student who, like Ghosn himself, was fond of bridge. She also has Lebanese roots.
They married in 1984 when Ghosn was 30, and a year later took off for Rio de Janeiro, where the rising corporate star was put in charge of the Michelin tire company’s South American operations. Ghosn was so successful at restructuring the firm and helping it become profitable that his corporate bosses in Paris put him charge of their operations in the US.
The Ghosns moved with their young family — they have four children — to South Carolina where the corporate titan eventually was promoted to CEO of Michelin North America in 1990. Six years later, the family moved to Paris where he headed operations for Renault. In 1999 when Renault and Nissan formed their alliance, executives called on Ghosn as chief operating officer. By 2001, he was appointed CEO of Nissan, and uprooted his family yet again — this time to Tokyo.
But following Ghosn around the world was tough on Rita who had abandoned her own career plans to raise her family and support Ghosn’s successful trajectory, according to French press reports. By 2012, their marriage was over.
“All narcissists are hypocrites,” said Rita Ghosn in a social media post shortly after his arrest. “They pretend to have morals and values that they really don’t possess. Behind closed doors, they lie, insult, criticize, disrespect and abuse. They can do and say whatever they want, but how dare you say anything back to them or criticize them.”
Friends of the couple said the bitterness largely stemmed from Ghosn’s relationship with Carole Nahas Marshi, an Upper East Side-based mother of three who had been married to Lebanese-born banker Marwan Marshi.
With Carole, a philanthropist and entrepreneur who once headed a high-end caftan company, Ghosn suddenly became a boldface name on the European social circuit. Often photographed holding hands, the happy couple regularly attended glittering charity events, the Cannes Film Festival and the 2016 Olympic Summer Games in Rio. They flew on a lavish corporate jet to Ghosn’s sprawling homes in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Beirut — all multi-million dollar properties that Ghosn convinced Nissan to buy for him. His French lawyers recently defended the purchases, saying it was much cheaper for the company to put him up at a series of private residences when he traveled on business rather than paying for high-end hotel rooms for Ghosn and his security team.
Since New Year’s Eve, the couple, who had not been allowed to see each other for months while Ghosn was imprisoned in Japan, have been happily esconced at their $15-million salmon-hued mansion in Beirut. The $6 million renovations to the property, financed by Nissan, include expensive antiques and portraits of the former CEO.
“I have not fled justice — I have escaped injustice and political persecution,” an audacious Ghosn insisted at a press conference that stretched for more than two hours in Beirut last week in which he alternated answering reporters’ questions in Arabic, French, Portuguese and English. Ghosn holds Brazilian, French and Lebanese citizenship, and is beloved in Lebanon where the president Michel Aoun met with him hours after his arrival last month. Some Lebanese politicians had always hoped that the man who saved Nissan would do the same for the country one day and encouraged Ghosn to run for political office. In 2017, the country issued a postage stamp with his face on it. Although Lebanese authorities banned him from traveling outside the country last week, they said they will not comply with an Interpol “red notice” to extradite Ghosn to Japan.
Last week, Japan requested that Interpol arrest Carole Ghosn, who is wanted in Japan on charges that she allegedly gave false testimony about her husband during a court appearance in Japan in April. Like her husband, Carole Ghosn is a Lebanese citizen.
In addition to vigorously denying allegations of financial crimes, Ghosn accused Japanese law enforcement and former corporate colleagues of colluding against him to plot his downfall. After his arrest in 2018, Ghosn spent 14 months in prison and house arrest. He was often interrogated without the presence of an attorney and cut off from his family, he said.
In addition to his troubles in Japan, Ghosn also addressed his Versailles parties last week, which have been the subject of ongoing probes in France. Auditors for Nissan are looking into Renault-Nissan BV, a Netherlands corporate entity which Japanese authorities said Ghosn used to finance his lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of a yacht and various homes around the world.
Ghosn said he did not pay to rent Versailles for his wife’s party in 2016 because the palace’s renovations had been bankrolled by Renault. Somehow, the $55,000 price tag for the party was deducted from “the credit Renault earns from being a sponsor of Versailles,” he said. Ghosn has said he will pay back the cost of the swanky affair.
“Catherine Pegard, who is the head of Versailles, told me, ‘Mr. Ghosn you are a big benefactor, you know from time to time for our big friends we can make rooms available. If you have a private party, we can make rooms available,’” said Ghosn at the press conference. “I say thank you very much.”
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