Nissan, which said the job cuts will be made globally by 2022, added that it will reduce global production capacity and its product line-up by about 10% by the end of fiscal 2022. The automaker had 138,000 employees globally as of March 2018.

Its first-quarter operating profit plunged 98.5% to 1.6 billion yen ($14.80 million) as it continues to struggle in North America, a key market where it has been stung by mounting costs of vehicle discounts to keep up with rivals.

Years of heavy discounting to grow sales has left Nissan with a cheapened brand image and low vehicle resale values, while the costs to offer high discounts have hit its bottom line.

Nissan had flagged a steep drop in profit on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

The dismal quarter will add pressure on Hiroto Saikawa, Nissan’s embattled CEO, who has been tasked with shoring up the company’s performance amid the Ghosn scandal. Ghosn has denied the charges of financial misconduct.

The automaker is widening job cuts initially announced in May as it struggles to improve weak profit margins in the United States, where Ghosn for years had pushed to aggressively grow market share during his time as CEO.

Nissan’s operating profit in the April-June quarter compared with the 109.14 billion yen made in the year-ago period and missed the 39.52 billion yen average of eight analyst estimates compiled by Refinitiv.

The company maintained its profit forecast of 230 billion yen for the year ending March 2020, a 28% drop from last year and its weakest in more than a decade.

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“Nissan decided today to suspend vehicle production for the Japan market at all Nissan and Nissan Shatai plants in Japan,” it said in a statement, referring to an affiliate.

The announcement comes weeks after the company announced the major recall as it admitted that staff without proper authorisation had conducted final inspections on some vehicles intended for the domestic market before they were shipped to dealers.

On Thursday, it said a third-party investigator found the misconduct had continued at three of its six Japanese plants even after it took steps to end the crisis.

“Nissan regards the recurrence of this issue at domestic plants — despite the corrective measures taken — as critical,” it said.

“The investigation team will continue to thoroughly investigate the issue and determine measures to prevent a recurrence.”

Nissan president Hiroto Saikawa offered a blunt assessment, saying that “old habits” were to blame.

“You might say it would be easy to stop people who are not supposed to inspect from inspecting,” he told reporters Thursday.

“But we are having to take (new measures) in order to stop old habits that had been part of our routine operations at the factories.”

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