Jailed man regrets role in helping Ghosn flee

While Carlos Ghosn sits free as a fugitive in Lebanon, two men who helped him escape house arrest in Japan are sitting in jail.

“There is only one positive in this, which is that I helped save a man’s life,” Michael Taylor, an inmate in Dedham, Mass., told The Wall Street Journal for a story published last week. “I wish I was never involved.”

Taylor and his son Peter helped sneak Ghosn, the former Nissan and Renault chairman, out of his home in Japan inside a musical instrument case. The Taylors were arrested in May and are now fighting extradition to Japan. They haven’t disputed helping Ghosn but argue that their assistance didn’t break any Japanese law.

Michael Taylor, a security specialist who was in the U.S. Army Special Forces, got a call from a former client who asked him to help Ghosn flee Japan, and prosecutors say he and his son received wire transfers totaling $1.3 million for their help. Ghosn was slated to go on trial in Japan on financial misconduct charges that he has denied.

Peter Taylor first met with Ghosn in July 2019 at Cicada, a Mediterranean restaurant in Tokyo that a website describes as “a great escape.”