by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
SOUTH BRONX/SDNY, Aug 8 – Amid scandals, Nissan has applied for a banking charter to the FDIC and Utah regulator.
On July 23, Fair Finance Watch filed timely opposition to Nissan's application:
On behalf of Fair Finance Watch, this is a timely comment in opposition to the application to charter and insure the proposed Nissan Bank U.S. LLC.
This cookie-cutter application, for which inappropriate requests for confidential treatment have been made, explains virtually nothing about what the proposed Nissan Bank would do, particularly under the Community Reinvestment Act.
While the claim is made that it will serve, if not the community, Nissan dealership, the scandal-plagued company has been sued by its dealerships: "A Southern California dealership group has accused Nissan North America in a lawsuit of a “nefarious scheme to suffocate the vehicle inventory of and ultimately squeeze out one of its most loyal and successful franchised dealers for illegal and improper reasons."
This refers to Nissan's wider, still unresolved scandal.
See, e.g, "THIS PUBLIC SCANDAL HAS TO BE THE WORST IN NISSAN'S HISTORY,"
"The 2020s have thus far proven to be a horrific decade for Nissan. With income rapidly declining, discontinuation of the GT-R halo car, and about 20,000 layoffs as of May 2025, the Japanese automaker hasn't seen a break in a while — but at least it's a better situation than the Carlos Ghosn scandal, an ongoing tale of financial misappropriation, breach of trust, and a daring escape inside a musical instrument box. The scandal revolves around a combination of various financial fraud accusations levied against one Carlos Ghosn, former head of Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi. The accusations claim the disgraced CEO supposedly underreported vast sums of his own salary and organized a complex financial scheme between his personal account, Nissan, and the Middle East."
The scandal are even more specific, impacting for example subcontractors: Nissan received " a warning from the Fair Trade Commission. The regulator in March reported that Nissan unlawfully pressured subcontractors between January 2021 and April 2023 to reduce prices. Underpayments totaled ¥3 billion, the most ever recorded since the Subcontract Act was enacted in 1956. Earlier this month, TV Tokyo reported that Nissan had continued the practice with two suppliers despite the warning."
This is not a company that should be given FDIC insurance from US taxpayers, not a bank charter with no public benefit, no real CRA plan.
On August 8 Nissan's outside law firm intoned to the FDIC: "On behalf of Nissan Motor Acceptance Company LLC (“NMAC”), and as the proposed President and Chief Executive Officer of Nissan Bank U.S., LLC (the “Bank”), a Utah state- chartered industrial bank, I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the Fair Finance Watch’s letter regarding the Bank’s Charter and Deposit Insurance application to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) and Utah Department of Financial Institutions (“UDFI”) and the Bank’s proposed Community Reinvestment Act (“CRA”) plan... the litigation concerning specific Nissan dealerships and suppliers, as well as the events concerning former Nissan executives, are being treated with the utmost seriousness by the company." How?
FFW will have more to say when it receives responses to its and Inner City Press' FOIA requests. On the current record, the application(s) could not legitimately be approved.
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