A deeper look at the SMBC Nikko case

TOKYO — Readers, like the always trenchant Peter Daniel Miller, have raised some interesting points about my last column on the SMBC Nikko matter. Since this is still an active trial, it is unlikely that Trevor himself will engage in any discussion. Everything that I used to write the original article consists of the public domain information, discussions with other interested observers of the case, and my recollections of the few conversations I indeed had with Trevor over the last few years where he has explained some of the background to this case.

This is a bizarre case. Let’s suppose Hill and the Nikko Five are innocent. Who did call down the wrath of the Tokyo Prosecutors on them? The real case against Greg Kelly, one could reasonably argue as Peter does, was that he was a stand-in for Carlos Ghosn, who had escaped prosecutorial retribution and that Kelly got caught in the “crossfire of internecine warfare within Nissan, which devolved into a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’ ” as Peter put its.