Ousted car industry boss Carlos Ghosn has lost a wrongful dismissal claim and has instead been ordered by a court to repay nearly €5m in wages.

Mr Ghosn had been seeking €15m in compensation after being sacked as chairman of the Dutch-based alliance between Japanese manufacturers Nissan and Mitsubishi.

But a court in Amsterdam rejected his claims, saying he did not have a valid contract with the company at the time.

He has now been ordered to repay money he received from the joint venture from April to November 2018.

The court found that Mr Ghosn had wrongfully determined his own salary and signing-on bonus at the venture, Nissan-Mitsubishi BV.

It also concluded that the board member who had signed his employment contract on behalf of the car companies did not have the power to do so.

A spokesman for Mr Ghosn said his defence team would take the case to an appeal.

Nissan and Mitsubishi welcomed the ruling.

Mr Ghosn was ousted from his leadership roles at Nissan as well as France's Renault, which is in a partnership with the Japanese carmaker, after he was accused of financial misconduct in Japan and arrested in 2018.

He skipped bail in Tokyo and fled to Lebanon, where he grew up, in 2019.

Mr Ghosn has said he is innocent of the allegations against him.

In a news conference last year he compared the shock of his arrest to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.