- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2024-02-09T17:05:00
The ongoing off-channel communications sweep by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) netted 16 more broker-dealers and investment advisers, with the latest wave of fines totaling more than $81 million.
The firms each admitted they violated the recordkeeping provisions of federal securities laws when their employees communicated about company business on nonauthorized channels that were not supervised, monitored, recorded, or archived. In addition to paying fines, which ranged from $16.5 million to $1.25 million, the firms each took steps to remediate the issues, the SEC said Friday in a press release.
The firms and the amounts fined were:
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Registered investment adviser Senvest Management agreed to pay $6.5 million as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission addressing admitted off-channel communications violations and separate code of ethics failures.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced settlements with U.S. Bank and Oppenheimer & Co. for admitted recordkeeping and supervision failures regarding employee use of off-channel communications for conducting business.
Ameriprise Financial disclosed it recorded a $50 million accrual related to the resolution of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into use of off-channel communications by its employees for conducting business.
German petrochemical parts supplier Aiotec agreed to pay $14.5 million to settle allegations that it engaged in a four-year conspiracy to dismantle and ship a plastics manufacturing plant owned by a U.S. company to Iran, in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Kiromic BioPharma will pay no fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission after self-reporting that it failed to disclose material information about two cancer drugs to investors.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority fined the London branch of Australian-based Macquarie Bank Limited more than 13 million pounds (U.S. $16.3 million) for “serious control failures” that allowed a trader to conceal hundreds of fictitious trades over a 20-month period.
