Spying case won’t hit electric car rollout-Renault CEO
* Espionage aimed at investment plan, not technology-Ghosn
* Renault chief says has ample proof in spying case
* Lawyer calls on Renault to provide evidence of wrongdoing
By Daniel Flynn
PARIS, Jan 23 – The chief executive of French carmaker Renault RENA.PA said on Sunday that a case of suspected industrial espionage at the company would not affect the rollout of three electric car models this year.
In his first television interview since the case erupted, Carlos Ghosn said the suspected espionage appeared to have been aimed at uncovering Renault’s investment model for its electric vehicles rather than copying the technology.
Renault, which conducted its own internal investigation into the case for several months before alerting French authorities, has fired three senior executives in connection with the case.
A lawyer for one of the three men, who strongly deny any wrongdoing and say they will sue the company for damaging their reputations, had called on Ghosn to use Sunday’s interview to present some details of the case against them.
“We have certainties. If we did not have certainties, we would not be doing this,” Ghosn told TF1 television. He declined to provide specifics of what proof Renault held, saying simply: “They are multiple and that’s exactly why we started legal procedings.”
The scandal had threatened to harm improving relations between France and China after a government source said intelligence services were looking into a possible connection with China as part of initial checks before the official probe.
The French government has played down the possibility of a link to China, saying it is not accusing any one country of involvement, while China has denied any link to the case.
Asked whether there was indeed a Chinese connection to the case, Ghosn said it was now in the hands of judicial authorities and it was up to them to decide. “We are going to cooperate and be very discrete about this affair,” he said. “What is important is that we continue to advance in a cutting edge technology in which we have an advantage of two to three years over our rivals,” he said. “We have no evidence that it was technology itself which was the objective of this procedure.”
Renault is staking its future on growth in the electric car sector and Ghosn said that “under no circumstances” would the suspected spying case affect this.
MINISTER SAYS RENAULT TOO SLOW
Industry Minister Eric Besson had told French radio earlier on Sunday that Renault should have notified authorities much sooner, rather than pursuing its own investigation to its end.
Ghosn has said he was first notified about the case in August but the company did not formally present a legal complaint until mid January.
The Renault CEO said, however, that the company had its own internal procedures which needed to be respected. He earlier told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that the carmaker had not broken any laws by conducting its own lengthy internal inquiry into the affair before making it public. [ID:nLDE70L0CS]
Pierre-Olivier Sur, one of the lawyers defending Renault’s former vice president of advanced engineering, Michel Balthazard, said sources close to the investigation had said payments to offshore bank accounts in Liechtenstein and Switzerland had been uncovered.
“These financial flows are traceable,” Sur told Reuters, arguing that Renault as the plaintiff was not obliged to keep its evidence secret under French law.
“Let someone indicate these traces and we’ll see it doesn’t stand up, because my client has never had any offshore accounts. So there’s a mistake.”