Ex-Wells Fargo execs sq. off with U.S. regulator in trial in excess of phony account scandal

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The trial of a few previous Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) staff above their alleged roles in a scandal involving phony accounts kicked off on Monday, a unusual public confrontation in between a prime U.S. banking regulator and former significant-degree bank executives.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is squaring off against executives it suggests are partly culpable for the San Francisco lender’s misconduct in advance of an in-household OCC decide in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in a listening to anticipated to last at the very least two months.

The OCC alleges that Wells Fargo’s previous danger officer Claudia Russ Anderson, previous chief auditor David Julian and previous executive audit director Paul McLinko failed to sufficiently execute their duties and responsibilities, contributing to Wells Fargo’s “systemic gross sales tactics misconduct” from 2002 to 2016.

The regulator introduced civil costs past year against the trio, as effectively as other previous Wells Fargo executives, and has demanded they fork out just about $19 million mixed to settle the make any difference. The OCC is also in search of to bar Russ Anderson from the banking business over allegations of outright law and regulation violations.

The proceedings mark a considerable milestone for a regulator that has been criticized in the previous for getting way too soft on both financial institutions and business executives.

The extensive-operating scandal more than Wells Fargo’s pressurized sales culture that led team to open up hundreds of thousands of unauthorized or fraudulent shopper accounts has charge the financial institution billions of dollars in civil and legal penalties and has badly destroyed its reputation.

Wells Fargo’s “incentive sales system was implemented with out danger-administration controls, with out proactive checking and it effectively incented the financial institution personnel to open fraudulent accounts, to deliver misleading information to shoppers, resulting in significant damage to the customers and to the status of the lender,” claimed Greg Coleman, OCC’s senior deputy comptroller for big lender supervision and the initial witness to testify at the listening to.

Russ Anderson as the neighborhood bank division’s main possibility officer and McLinko and Julian as audit executives represented key lines of defense in opposition to misconduct, the OCC formal claimed.

Attorneys for the trio did not answer to requests for comment but an attorney representing Julian lifted opportunity challenges of bias and reliability of government examiners in the opening several hours of the hearing, hinting at a potential protection method.

A spokesperson for Wells Fargo declined to remark beyond a January 2020 assertion in which CEO and President Charlie Scharf mentioned the OCC’s steps have been regular with holding the agency and people accountable for “inexcusable” profits methods concerns.

Reporting by Jody Godoy and Chris Prentice Enhancing by Michelle Selling price, Peter Cooney and Mark Porter

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