2024-02-09 19:33:26
The United States stock market regulator announced this Friday that it charged 16 investment firms for the use of personal messaging To treat business issues by your employeesso they will pay combined fines of more than US$81 millionas agreed.
The North American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) assured in a statement that the employees of the companies involved made a widespread use of “unapproved methods of communication” and personal text messages were sent through back channels to discuss company business.
Using WhatsApp for business matters can lead to fines in the United States
“The companies did not maintain or preserve the vast majority of these off-channel communications, violating the federal securities legislation” explained the organization.
This breach affected employees of “multiple levels of authority”as supervisors and senior managers.
Entre las sancionadas se encuentran Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, Guggenheim Securities, Oppenheimer & Co., Cambridge Investment Research, Key Investment Services, Lincoln Financial Advisors Corporation, U.S.Bancorp Investments y The Huntington Investment Company.
It is not the regulator’s first sanction on the matter.
This is the latest sanction from the regulator, which has been investigating companies’ record-keeping practices for several years; in fact, in August 2023 has already sanctioned eleven companies with a fine of US$289 million by “widespread failures” on this issue.
Among those sanctioned then was the bank Wells Fargoand other entities have been punished in similar cases where employees used messaging apps like WhatsApp to discuss work issues without later keeping a record.
According to the SEC, the firms fined today have already begun to apply improvements in their policies to address these violations, and have agreed to engage independent compliance consultants to review their procedures for retaining communications on personal devices.
“The actions taken today against these 16 companies are the result of our continued efforts to ensure that all regulated entities comply with recordkeeping requirements, which are essential to our ability to monitor and enforce compliance with the federal securities laws.” , the director of the SEC Enforcement Division, Gurbir S. Grewal, said in the statement.
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