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(Reuters) – Societe Generale, France’s third largest financial institution, has been drawn right into a probe by the U.S. securities regulator on whether or not its employees had used unauthorized messaging platforms, in accordance with the lender’s annual report launched on Wednesday.
The U.S. Securities and Change Fee (SEC) sought info from SocGen’s U.S. unit associated to “compliance with record-keeping necessities in reference to business-related communications on messaging platforms that weren’t accepted by the agency,” the lender mentioned in its report.
The SEC in 2021 started probing into how Wall Road banks have been protecting observe of staff’ digital communications, Reuters reported on the time, and later the Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee (CFTC) was additionally scrutinizing the problem, financial institution disclosures confirmed.
The probe additionally impacted banking giants together with JPMorgan Chase & Co and Financial institution of America and banks have been collectively requested to pay greater than $1 billion in regulatory fines for workers’ use of unapproved messaging instruments, together with e-mail and apps like WhatsApp.
The inquiry “follows numerous regulatory settlements in 2022 with different corporations overlaying comparable issues,” SocGen’s annual report mentioned. The knowledge associated to the SEC was buried on web page 209. The financial institution added that it’s “cooperating with the investigation”.
Societe Generale declined to remark additional on the inquiry.
(Reporting by Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar in New York; Enhancing by Shailesh Kuber)