- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2024-09-05T14:32:00
Six credit rating agencies will pay $49 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for allowing their employees to communicate on company business using nonapproved communication channels like Whats App and WeChat.
The six firms are credit ratings agencies, representing a new category of firms entering into settlements with the SEC for off-channel communication violations that, until now, has mostly targeted broker-dealers and investment advisers.
According to an SEC press release, issued Tuesday, the latest firms to settle include Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. to pay $20 million; S&P Global Ratings to pay $20 million; Fitch Ratings, Inc. to pay $8 million; HR Ratings de México, S.A. de C.V. to pay $250,000; A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. to pay $1 million; and Demotech, Inc. to pay $100,000.
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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.
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.
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.
A bank examiner and senior manager at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond pled guilty to insider trading after allegedly misappropriating confidential information on seven banks to make profitable trades.
New York-based investment firm Drexel Hamilton will pay more than $1.1 million in penalties, with four current and former employees paying fines as well over committing hundreds of violations of rules regarding the sale of municipal bonds.
A publicly traded cryptocurrency mining company will pay $10 million and completely change its business model to one with “lower corruption risk” as part of a settlement over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), two regulators announced.
