The businessman should have been kept in jail, prosecutors claim, because he had ‘financial power and foreign bases’

Carlos Ghosn should have been kept in jail because his network of connections made it “easy for him to flee” house arrest, prosecutors in Japan have said.

In their first comments since the former Nissan chief’s audacious escape from Japan to Lebanon, the prosecutors said his flight had vindicated their widely criticised decision to keep Ghosn in custody for much of the time after his arrest in 2018 on charges of financial irregularities.

Related: Carlos Ghosn: an arrest, an escape, and questions about justice in Japan