Feb 8 (Reuters) – Societe Generale is the target in the United States of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American financial policeman, into the use by its teams of unauthorized messaging services for their professional communications, the French bank said in a financial press release available on its website.
The SEC has asked the American subsidiary of SocGen, SGAmericas Securities, to provide it with information concerning compliance with the obligation imposed on financial institutions to keep records of all professional communications, adds the banking group.
The SEC launched a major investigation in 2021 to find out how Wall Street financial institutions archive or keep traces of the digital communications of their teams. The US derivatives regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is also conducting its investigation.
The investigation also targeted American banking heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, and certain establishments were forced to collectively pay more than a billion dollars in fines for the use by their employees of unauthorized messaging services such as the WhatsApp application. .
Société Générale indicates in the financial press release that it is cooperating with the investigation. The bank declined to comment on the matter. (Report Jaiveer Shekhawat in Bangalore and Saeed Azhar in New York, French version Matthieu Protard)
