The Lebanese judiciary stopped the prosecution of auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn for the offense of visiting the Israeli occupation, based on a report submitted by three lawyers against him at the beginning of the year after he arrived in Beirut after fleeing Japan.

In January, lawyers Hassan Bazzi, Jad Tohme, and Ali Abbas filed a report against Ghosn for the offense of "entering Israel, dealing with the Israeli enemy and establishing commercial relations with him," on the back of a visit he made in 2008 as a manager of the French company Renault to sign a partnership agreement with an Israeli occupation car company.

A judicial source told Agence France-Presse Tuesday that "the cassation public prosecutor, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, decided to save the papers and not to prosecute Ghosn in the crimes attributed to him in terms of entering the enemy's country and dealing with him economically, due to the passage of the decimal time after the alleged crime."

During a press conference in Beirut after his controversial escape from Japan, Ghosn defended his visit, which included a meeting with former Israeli President Shimon Peres and other officials. He said that he went as "French, according to an agreement signed between Renault and an Israeli company."

He has since apologized for the visit. 

The former head of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has been in Beirut since the end of 2019, after fleeing Japan, where he was arrested in November 2018 and spent 130 days in prison.

The Japanese judiciary charged the businessman who holds Lebanese, French and Brazilian nationalities four counts, including failure to declare his entire income and using Nissan's money that he saved from bankruptcy to make payments to personal acquaintances and embezzling the company's funds for personal use. The total unauthorized amount is more than 9 billion yen ($85 million) over eight years, according to Tokyo.

Ghosn denies the accusations. Japan demanded that Lebanon hand over Ghosn to complete his trial. However, the authorities in Beirut asked Tokyo to provide it with his judicial file, without having received it yet.

Ghosn constantly refuses to reveal the details of his extraordinary escape, which has shocked Japan. The United States agreed at the end of October to hand over to Japan two Americans they suspected of helping Ghosn escape.

Ghosn is participating in a documentary and a short series about his life, according to a statement issued last month by the Saudi "MBC" network and the French "Aleph One" company.