Planned press conference could be damaging to the company and its execs.

When former Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn, under house arrest and staring down two financial-crimes trials in Japan, bolted for Lebanon, he left in his wake dozens of unanswered questions.

Investigators are looking into matters such as who exactly planned the Dec. 30 escape, who provided the private jets Ghosn allegedly took to Turkey and then Lebanon, and what were the various governments’ roles in his abrupt departure. Such bureaucratic diligence is all well and good, but with Ghosn now free to speak, we think the bigger question is: What’s going to happen at, and to, Nissan?

Ghosn has said he plans to hold a press conference next week and reveal all. With the company’s stock price plummeting and profits as low as they’ve been in decades, many, many Nissan execs must be panicking about what details Ghosn is going to reveal about the company and potentially their roles in Nissan’s recent market performance.

Indeed, as Bloomberg points out, things could get extremely dicey for CEO Makoto Uchida, for example. He needs to get the unhealthy relationship with Renault straightened out while getting rid of 12,500 workers, according to reports, while updating older Nissan models. And now he needs to worry about what Ghosn might say.

So far Ghosn has said the charges of financial shenanigans are false. He has been accused of underreporting his salary by about $44.6 million and personally using the automaker’s funds and assets. He has said Nissan execs, in cahoots with the Japanese government, have trumped up the charges because he wanted to make the alliance between Renault and Nissan even stronger.

And now, he says, he’ll “finally communicate freely with the media” to clear his name in a press conference scheduled for 8 a.m. (EST) Wednesday, January 8th, in Beirut.

What scores will he settle? He could identify Nissan executives he says turned on him for their own advancement. Bloomberg says, for example, that Hiroto Saikawa, once a Ghosn protégé, blamed his former mentor for many of Nissan’s woes. Last year Saikawa was fired for a scandal involving excess compensation. Bloomberg also points to another whistleblower, Hari Nada, the former head of the CEO’s office.

In a video, Ghosn said he’s not just worried about Nissan’s declining performance; he also doesn’t think there is any vision.

Stay tuned to see how this all shakes out. Ghosn’s fleeing to Lebanon doesn’t make things easier for Nissan, but his press conference next week could be even more damaging.

Source: Autoweek