NY.- US regulatory bodies announced this Tuesday combined fines of 549 million dollars (about 501 million euros) against the US bank Wells Fargo and a series of companies who did not maintain electronic records of the communications of the employees using messaging apps as WhatsApp.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced $289 million in fines against eleven companies for “widespread failures” to keep records.
While the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) it also said it fined four banks a total of $260 million for failing to keep records required by the agency.
The sanctioned firms admitted that since at least 2019, employees used secondary channels such as WhatsApp to discuss company business and failed to preserve records “in violation of federal law.”
Wells Fargo, the fourth largest bank in the US by assets, today racked up the most fines, totaling $200 million in penalties.
This is the latest effort by Washington, DC-based regulators to crack down on the widespread use of messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp, or Apple iMessage among employees, with related fines totaling more than 2,000 in recent years. million dollars, according to the SEC and CFTC.
In January, investment bank Morgan Stanley fined several of its employees or executives up to $1 million for doing business using these messaging apps.
This measure was put into practice, after in September 2022, Morgan Stanley and other large banks agreed with US regulators to pay large penalties for the misuse that their employees were making of WhatsApp and other similar tools.
