by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
SOUTH BRONX/SDNY, Feb 2 – Amid the FDIC's bid to eliminate public notice of and public comment on branch applications, Nomura is trying to get a crypto bank license from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
On February 2 Fair Finance Watch filed opposition:
"On behalf of Fair Finance Watch, this is opposition to the (re) application for a bank charter for Nomura's proposed Laser Digital National Trust Bank and AGAIN to WLTC NA, on which FFW has repeatedly commented with no response from the OCC.
Nomura is counting on today's OCC to shield it from the Community Reinvestment Act, as is WLTC, stating "Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Plan... Not applicable."
We note Inner City Press' pending and unacted on - not even yet acknowledged - FOIA requests. These business plans should be released. They are supposedly about the community - but it is being hidden. Be aware that for example the Utah regulator, on PayPal's application there, recently after Inner City Press submitted a state FOIA request released PayPal's proposed CRA plan. Why is the OCC allowing proposed new banks to withhold their business plans? Significant adverse issues exist as to Nomura. For the record on this application: Nomura Holdings Inc.’s loans to an investment fund embroiled in a short-selling firm’s allegations against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani have come under scrutiny in a London lawsuit and see Nomura Denies Overcharging Investor $3.8M To Cover Tax and see Nomura Says Fund's $49M Claim Is 'Misconceived'
FFW will have further comments when the requested information is released by the OCC - the comment periods must be extended. The OCC including Comptroller Gould are on record promising ever-faster review and approval of applications. Whatever the (lack of) merits of the OCC's belated denial of a public hearing on UBS, one is clearly needed on WLTC.
Meanwhile fellow money laundering settler Bunq is applying to the OCC for a bank, along with a higher profile application by WLTC also protested by FFW.
While Inner City Press simultaneously challenged Bunq and WLTC, by 7 pm on January 14 the OCC had only acknowledged FFW's comment on Bunq - nothing on WLTC - even now on January 26, while the comment period is running, set to expire on February 9 after a January 6 filing.
This as the OCC says its reviews are apolitical.
Or perhaps it is just incompetence: on January 26, the OCC sent a FOIA response: "Good morning Mr. Lee, Your request 2026-00059-F is a duplicate of your previous request 2026-00045-F, which we have already received and are processing. As a result, we will administratively close the duplicate request and continue processing the original request."
But the requests are entirely different: they are about entirely different digital bank applications. And still the comment periods run...
See, e.g., Sept 10, 2025: https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/the-fdic-is-undercutting-a-key-element-of-the-cra
But now the Federal regulator(s) blithely propose(s) to eliminate public notice and public comment on banks' proposals to expand. The above-quoted reasoning is that few comments are filed. So, that is now changing.
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