Former Nissan Motor representative director Greg Kelly has been released from detention in Japan after he was granted bail over the alleged understating of his boss Carlos Ghosn’s pay.

The release of Kelly, who is American, on 70 million yen ($A901,000) bail ends his 37 days in custody.

He and Ghosn were arrested on November 19 and charged with underreporting Ghosn’s pay by about 5 billion yen ($A62 million) in 2011-2015.

After being released late on Tuesday night local time, Kelly got into a car in the driveway of the detention centre and drove past reporters.

He was expected to go straight to a hospital for treatment of a chronic neck problem.

 

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The two arrests have jolted the global car industry and strained Nissan’s alliance with French car maker Renault SA.

Both Kelly and Ghosn remain on the Japanese car maker’s board but without representative rights.

Kelly’s wife, Dee Kelly, appealed for his release in a video statement last week, stating her husband had been ‘wrongly accused as part of a power grab by several Nissan executives’, that he and Ghosn ‘fully believe that they did not break the law’ and citing her husband’s need for surgery for spinal stenosis.

The same Tokyo court had extended on Sunday Ghosn’s detention for 10 days, following fresh allegations of making Nissan shoulder personal investment losses.

Ghosn was re-arrested on Friday based on suspicions that around October 2008 he shifted personal trades to Nissan to make it responsible for 1.85 billion yen ($A23.5 million) in appraisal losses, prosecutors said.