- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2024-09-24T15:31:00
Regulators continue to hammer firms with fines for violating rules regarding the use of unapproved communication methods by employees, issuing $120 million in fines this week. And for the first time, two firms were not fined because they self-reported their violations.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued $88 million in fines against 11 firms Tuesday, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined two firms a total of $32 million on Monday and Tuesday.
The SEC said that it would not fine Atom Investors and Qatalyst Partners, despite finding violations of the agency’s recordkeeping rules, because both firms self-reported their violations.
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Fines for off-channel communications use by employees just keep on coming, with 12 municipal advisory firms fined a total of $1.3 million in the latest Securities and Exchange Commission sweep.
Six credit rating agencies will pay $49 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission for allowing their employees to communicate on company business using nonapproved communication channels like Whats App and WeChat.
Two regulators doled out more than $477 million in fines on a new group of broker-dealers, investment advisers, and swaps dealers that failed to maintain and preserve the electronic communications of their employees, bringing total such fines issued since 2021 to $3.2 billion.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board fined five consultancies, including Ernst & Young, as the agency continues its crackdown on firms violating audit committee communications rules and reporting requirements.
Aviation maintenance services provider AAR Corp. disclosed that several former employees may have bribed officials in Nepal and South Africa to win contracts, and chose to self-report violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to authorities in the U.S. and U.K.
There are dozens of ways foreign countries can get their hands on U.S. military secrets, including cyberhacking, espionage, theft, and more. But one increasingly concerning way has been through unintentional disclosures by trusted defense contractors, including Boeing, 3D Systems Corp., and RTX Corp., parent company of Raytheon.
