American courts have ruled that Mike Taylor is extraditable after the Japanese government requested he be sent to Japan to stand trial. However, Japanese corporate executives who are criminally charged remain at large without the Japanese honoring the extradition treaty they signed with the United States.
Taylor is a former U.S. Special Forces soldier who made headlines worldwide for allegedly smuggling Nissan executive Carlos Ghosn out of Japan and back to his home country, Lebanon. Months after the incident, U.S. Marshalls arrested Taylor and his eldest son at their home in Massachusetts as the Japanese had formally requested extradition. Taylor has yet to be formally charged for a crime in Japan and so it remains to be seen if his alleged actions are against Japanese law. Nominally, he is expected to be charged with helping Ghosn evade criminal prosecution in Japan for alleged corruption.
With the courts deciding to extradite Taylor, who has been sitting in jail for months, it is now up to the State Department to make the final decision on whether or not he will be transferred to custody in Japan, a country with a shoddy human rights record when it comes to incarceration and criminal justice.
Meanwhile, Taylor's pending extradition points out an apparent double standard in how the extradition treaty with Japan is being applied.
In 2017, the Department of Justice indicted Takata corporate executives Shinichi Tanaka, Hideo Nakajima and Tsuneo Chikaraishi, issuing arrest warrants for all three. Takata was an airbag manufacturer until declaring bankruptcy that knowingly sold defective airbags. Evidence presented by DOJ shows that the executives knew the airbags were dangerous for over a decade and actively concealed negative test results. The most recent victim of a faulty Takata airbag was in August of 2020 bringing the death toll of Americans due to this malfunctioning airbag to 11 and the worldwide death toll to 26.
To date, the Japanese government has not extradited Tanaka, Nakajima, or Chikraraishi.
Want to get more connected to the stories and resources Connecting Vets has to offer? Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.
