The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States announced on Tuesday million-dollar fines to various companies that have violated federal communications laws.
The companies, including the Wells Fargo bank, are accused of not keeping proper electronic records of communications with their employees and using channels such as WhatsApp to attend to business matters.
Regarding the amounts of the fines, it was revealed that they are combined amounts “of 549 million dollars (about 501 million euros) against the American bank Wells Fargo and a series of companies” that violated federal laws.
The SEC has confirmed “$289 million in penalties against eleven companies for “widespread failures” to maintain records.” For its part, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) “also said it fined four banks a total of $260 million for failing to keep records required by the agency.”
As the fined companies admitted, since approximately 2019 workers resorted to the use of WhatsApp as a means of communication with their employers for company business matters. Therefore, the proper record of the calls was not kept.
The enforcement of the fines is the latest “effort by Washington, D.C.-based regulators. to end the widespread use of messaging applications such as Signal, WhatsApp or Apple iMessage among employees, since in recent years the fines related to the subject add up to more than 2,000 million dollars, according to the SEC and the CFTC.”
M.Pino
Source: swissinfo
(Reference image source: freestocks, Unsplash)
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