Former Nissan executive Greg Kelly has been found guilty of helping the ex-CEO of Japanese auto giant Carlos Ghosn circumvent payroll disclosure laws.
The Tokyo court heard that Mr Kelly had helped Mr Ghosn hide part of 9.3 billion yen (£60 million; $80.4 million) of his earnings from financial regulators.
Mr Kelly was sentenced to six months in prison suspended for three years.
In 2019, Mr Ghosn fled Japan for his home country of Lebanon, hiding in a box on a private jet.
The ruling means Mr Kelly, who is a US citizen, will not be jailed as long as he meets the terms of his sentence for the next three years.
Prosecutors had sought a two-year prison sentence for Mr Kelly.
Under Japanese law, either side could appeal the verdict.
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Mr Kelly’s conviction ends the first and possibly only trial on the charges on which Mr Ghosn was arrested in 2018.
The court also fined Nissan 200 million yen for failing to disclose Mr Ghosn’s salary. The carmaker pleaded guilty at the beginning of the trial 18 months ago.
This ruling will come as a relief not only to Greg Kelly and his family, but also to the US and Japanese governments.
The Kelly case has been a thorn in the side of US-Japan relations for the past three years.
You can see this from the response from the US Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, who immediately issued a statement welcoming the fact that Mr Kelly and his wife can now return to the United States.
The verdict itself is only a partial victory for Tokyo prosecutors.
In the end, Mr. Kelly was sentenced to one year, 2018, on just one charge of false reporting of financial information.
The judges dismissed the prosecution’s case that Mr Kelly was involved in a much larger conspiracy to hide around $80 million in compensation to former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, dating back to 2010.
The cases against Mr Kelly and Carlos Ghosn have been extremely controversial and have cast an unwelcome light on the Japanese judicial system, particularly the system of detaining and questioning suspects for long periods without charge and without the presence of a lawyer.
He was to serve as a co-defendant alongside Mr Kelly before Mr Ghosn fled Japan.
Mr Ghosn was initially arrested on financial misconduct charges for allegedly under-reporting his pay package for the five years to 2015.
He has told the BBC about his dramatic escape, which included disguising himself to slip through the streets of Tokyo unnoticed, hiding in a large music box and fleeing to his native Lebanon.
In 2021, an American father and son were jailed in Japan for helping smuggle Mr Ghosn out of the country on a private jet.
US Special Forces veteran Michael Taylor was sentenced to two years in prison, while his son Peter was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison.
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