By Jody Godoy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Office environment of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a top U.S. banking regulator, is scheduled to start out a civil trial on Monday for a few previous Wells Fargo & Co executives above their alleged roles in a scandal involving phony accounts at the San Francisco financial institution.
The proceedings prior to an in-residence OCC decide in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, will mark a unusual public confrontation among the regulator and former top rated lender executives it claims are partly culpable for Wells Fargo’s misconduct.
The OCC alleges that Wells Fargo’s former possibility officer Claudia Russ Anderson, former main auditor David Julian and former executive audit director Paul McLinko failed to adequately execute their obligations and responsibilities, contributing to Wells Fargo’s “systemic gross sales methods misconduct” from 2002 to 2016.
The regulator brought civil charges past calendar year versus the trio, as properly as other former Wells Fargo executives, and has demanded they fork out approximately $19 million blended to settle the make a difference. It is also looking for to bar Russ Anderson from the banking business.
Russ Anderson, Julian and McLinko are combating the allegations. Lawyers for the trio did not reply to requests for remark.
“This hearing represents the culmination of the OCC’s longstanding efforts to keep these individuals accountable for material failures in threat administration and for client hurt,” the OCC stated in a statement, incorporating it expects the demo to very last at the very least two months.
The extended-jogging scandal over Wells Fargo’s pressurized revenue culture that led team to open up millions of unauthorized or fraudulent buyer accounts has value the bank billions of bucks in civil and legal penalties and has poorly ruined its name.
A spokesman for Wells Fargo did not quickly react to a ask for for remark on Sunday.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy Added reporting by Chris Prentice Editing by Michelle Price and Peter Cooney)
