Renault’s Spy Case * France - Renault’s Ghosn, Pelata Give Up Bonuses Over Bungled Case

Renault Board Said to Meet

Boulogne-Billancourt,Paris,France -Bloomberg, by Laurence Frost - Mar 14, 2011: -- Renault SA Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn gave up his bonus and turned down second-in-command Patrick Pelata’s resignation after the company admitted wrongfully accusing senior managers of spying... The French carmaker also announced disciplinary action against three of its security officers and pledged compensation and reinstatement for upstream development chief Michel Balthazard and two other executives fired on suspicion of selling company secrets... The carmaker retracted its espionage claims today after Paris Chief Prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said they had been discredited by police... Balthazard, his subordinate Bertrand Rochette and deputy electric-car program chief Matthieu Tenenbaum were fired in January after a company investigation concluded they had received payments from Chinese companies via foreign accounts... The case against them was based on verbal information obtained by security manager Dominique Gevrey from an undisclosed source, for which Renault had paid more than 300,000 euros, the prosecutor said today... Cooperation from the Swiss and Liechtenstein authorities rapidly established that the alleged bank accounts did not exist... In an earlier statement today, the CEO issued a personal apology to the fired executives and promised reparations to “restore their honor in the eyes of the world, taking account of the serious prejudice they and their families have suffered” ... (The Renault SA headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris. Photographer: Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg)