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November 03, 2016 at 10:45 AM
Three senators are asking Wells Fargo about its response to unauthorized accounts and its disclosure of the details related to this fraudulent activity and have asked them to provide answers to them by Dec. 5.
On Thursday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Bob Menendez questioned the accuracy of the bank’s filings with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority tied to the firing of employees over some 2 million possibly fake accounts.
In their six-page letter to President & CEO Tim Sloan which ends with 10 questions, the senators note that information recently obtained from FINRA shows that Wells Fargo filed nearly 18,000 U5 reports from 2011 to 2015 for fired staff.
“These reports … confirm that Wells Fargo had ample information about the scope of fraudulent sales practices occurring at the bank long before the [$185 million Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] settlement, and they raise additional questions about Wells Fargo’s response to this illegal activity,” the senators stated. “If this is the case, then it would appear that Wells Fargo concealed key information from regulators that may have revealed the bank’s misdeeds long before the September 2016 settlement.”
(Related: Wells Fargo Facing SEC Probe That Could Focus on Disclosures)
The three politicians also argue that recent news reports suggest that the bank may have violated FINRA rules “by filing incomplete or inaccurate U5s for many fired employees, raising questions about whether the company took retaliatory action by reporting defamatory information on whistleblowers.”
