Billion-Dollar Bank BNP Paribas Under US Government Investigation For Flawless Record Keeping

BNP Paribas, the European banking powerhouse, is now in talks with US regulators to settle investigations into its employees’ usage of chat apps that may have breached recordkeeping regulations.

As per BNP Paribas Securities Corp’s latest earnings report, the firm’s united states registered broker-dealer, the  Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are investigating potential violations of recordkeeping requirements.

The CFTC is also looking into BNP Paribas directly on this matter.

If employees of the financial institutions utilized “unapproved messaging platforms” for professional discussions, there might be fines, according to united states regulators who are investigating the corporations.

The bank claims that it and the SEC and CFTC have achieved “proposed resolutions” to end the investigations, but it adds that the ideas are still awaiting the authorities’ approval.

As a result of Wall Street’s usage of forbidden messaging apps for electronic conversations, united states regulators have been tough on the financial sector. For “longstanding failures” to maintain and preserve digital communications, the SEC fined 16 Wall Street businesses $1.1 billion last year.

Gary Gensler, the SEC’s chair, said as much.

“Finance, ultimately, depends on trust. By failing to honor their recordkeeping and books-and-records obligations, the market participants we have charged today have failed to maintain that trust. Since the 1930s, such recordkeeping has been vital to preserve market integrity.

As technology changes, it’s even more important that registrants appropriately conduct their communications about business matters within only official channels, and they must maintain and preserve those communications.”