Despite that, his time in confinement could continue for several more weeks. Under Japanese law, prosecutors can detain suspects for a total of 23 days without charging them with any crime. While being held, he is likely to live in spare conditions. Even a request for extra blankets would have to go through his lawyers.

“There will be no special treatment for Ghosn,” said Tsutomu Nakamura, a former prosecutor and now a private defense lawyer who is not involved with Ghosn’s situation. “He will be treated in the same way as a burglar.”

The extended inquiry adds to a dramatic and sudden fall. Ghosn created an alliance between Nissan, Renault, the French corporate icon, and Mitsubishi Motors, another Japanese auto company, making the global empire the world’s largest maker of cars.

The arrest followed an internal company inquiry that found Ghosn, together with Greg Kelly, a onetime Nissan human resources manager and current board member, had underreported Ghosn’s compensation to the Japanese government for several years.

According to the Tokyo prosecutors’ office, Ghosn and Kelly underreported Ghosn’s compensation between 2011 and 2015 by more than 5 billion yen ($44.5 million) — understating his true earnings by half — in reports to a bureau of Japan’s Ministry of Finance.

The prosecutors’ office did not answer questions about where exactly Ghosn or Kelly are being held. But Nakamura, the former prosecutor, said they were likely being held in a detention center in eastern Tokyo.

Even after 23 days, Japanese law permits prosecutors to rearrest suspects on suspicion of other crimes and extend their detention periods for further questioning.

“It’s pretty common in Japan to detain suspects for a long time,” Nakamura said. “This is very different from the Western criminal justice system.”

Suspects are usually held in 50-square-foot rooms where they sleep on the floor on futons. They are allowed a limited set of clothes, said Nakamura, but no long socks, which could be used by suspects who try to commit suicide.

These are not the kinds of circumstances to which Ghosn is accustomed. He kept homes in Paris, Amsterdam, Beirut and Rio de Janeiro; circled the globe on a corporate jet; collected contemporary art, invested in wineries and, in 2016, rented out Versailles for his wedding to his second wife, Carole.

In detention he will not even be allowed to host family visitors. Foreign suspects are allowed to see their lawyers and receive representatives from embassies.

Laurent Pic, the French ambassador to Japan, visited Ghosn, a French citizen who is also chairman and chief executive of Renault, in detention Tuesday. Landry Pierrefitte, deputy press counselor for the French Embassy in Tokyo, said he could not comment on Ghosn’s health or mental state.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo said that “due to privacy concerns,” it could not comment on whether any diplomatic staff had visited Kelly.

During a news conference at Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama on Monday, Hiroto Saikawa, Nissan’s chief executive, said the company is recommending that the board remove both Ghosn and Kelly from their posts. The board will meet Thursday to make a decision. Mitsubishi has also recommended that Ghosn be removed as chairman and its board will meet next week.

NHK, the public broadcaster, showed footage of Toshiyuki Shiga, Nissan’s former chief operating officer and a current board member, entering the Tokyo prosecutors’ office. He told reporters that he was voluntarily submitting to questioning.

Under a criminal justice reform law that went into effect in June of this year, prosecutors can offer immunity to suspects in certain cases involving financial, drug or firearm crimes if they pass on information about criminal activity committed by third parties.

Nissan said it was cooperating with the inquiry.

“Nissan has been providing information to the Japanese Public Prosecutors Office and has been fully cooperating with its investigation,” said Nicholas Maxfield, a Nissan spokesman. “We will continue to do so.”

Analysts criticized both Saikawa and Nissan’s board for not having detected the false reporting earlier.

“It seems like there were complaints against Ghosn within the company,” said Takashi Inoue, chief executive of Inoue Public Relations. Saikawa “is responsible for missing the false reporting.”

Inoue said other executives within Nissan may have been jealous of Ghosn, whose pay was much higher than anyone else in the company. As chairman of Nissan last year, Ghosn reported income of 735 million yen ($6.5 million) while Saikawa was paid 499 million yen ($4.4 million) as chief executive.

Some analysts said Ghosn’s pay may have triggered an outsize response to the alleged financial misconduct.

“Japanese media seems to be playing the ire of the public against large compensation of CEOs to support the charge, but the inequality in compensation between ordinary workers and C-class managers are moral issues, not criminal issues,” said Takuji Okubo, managing director and chief economist at Japan Macro Advisors in Tokyo, referring to positions like chief executive and chief financial officer.

“This dramatic arrest does seem excessive for what he has been alleged to have done. If he evaded a huge amount of tax to the authorities, the arrest would be justified.” But given that the allegations are that he had not declared income to corporate regulators, Okubo said, “I think this seems excessive.”

There is no current allegation that Ghosn did not pay appropriate taxes on his income.

Renault, the French carmaker that owns a 43 percent stake in Nissan, appointed a temporary leadership team Tuesday to fill the gap left by the arrest of Ghosn, but has said that Ghosn remains chairman and chief executive.

The French government, which is Renault’s biggest shareholder, was taking a cautious stance. The economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, said Tuesday that France had no evidence of the crimes that Ghosn has been accused of committing in Japan and would not call for his removal from the board of Renault.

Still, Le Maire said Ghosn was “no longer in a position capable of leading Renault” because of his troubles in Japan. Renault has described Ghosn as “temporarily incapacitated.”

The New York Times

Motoko Rich © 2018 The New York Times