Ohio’s senior senator Tuesday sharply questioned the CEO of Wells Fargo in the aftermath of reports that Wells Fargo employees secretly opened millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts without customers’ permission. “You should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission”.
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Lawmakers pressed Wells Fargo to explain who it fired besides low-level employees among the 5,300 workers that were let go as part of the scandal. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, called on him to resign and said he should face criminal charges. She announced in July her retirement from the bank this year.
In fact, Stumpf admitted under questioning by Senate Banking Committee member Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from MA, that he earned $19.3 million last year alone, $ 4 million of that a bonus for doing such a fine job of running the operation – this in a year in which the bank and its board of directors was well aware that it was being investigated for the enormous fraud. “We should have realized much sooner that the best way to solve the problems in the retail banking business was to completely eliminate retail bank product sales goals”.
“This is about accountability”, Warren said. Then she drilled into questions where he was unable to affirmatively answer that he had resigned, handed back money he’d earned or fired any senior executives.
As a result, thousands of Wells Fargo customers nationwide paid overdraft fees and late fees on credit cards and deposit accounts they never knew they had. “The argument will be that Wells Fargo was supposed to be the gold standard and even it was too big to be properly overseen by its board”, Seiberg said.
Warren began her questioning by citing Wells Fargo’s Vision and Values Statement, particularly its suggestion, “If you want to find out how strong a company’s ethics are, don’t listen to what its people say, watch what they do”.
Stumpf also spoke about how he hopes the company can move forward, on top of paying 5 million to customers affected by the economic travesty.
In an interview last week with The Wall Street Journal, Stumpf reportedly blamed the opening of the accounts on the employees.
So MOnday, Clinton wrote an open letter to Wells Fargo customers saying she was “deeply disturbed” by the news, and that she thinks the bank should rescind some of the compensation that executives responsible for the fraud received.
“When it all blew up, you kept your job”, Warren said to the CEO.
In 2015, an OCC review of Wells Fargo’s sales practices revealed shortcomings that prompted the agency to demand changes – including telling the bank to compensate customers for any harm suffered.
The House of Representative’s Financial Services Committee opened an investigation into the bank’s alleged misconduct as well as “the role of Washington regulators in monitoring and investigating” the alleged misconduct.
“You have said repeatedly, ‘I am accountable, ‘ but what have you actually done to hold yourself accountable?”
“I accept full responsibility for all unethical sales practices”, Stumpf said.
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Stumpf offered some detail at the hearing about who was sacked, saying “bankers, bank managers, managers of managers, and even an area president”. “That makes it sound like there was a mix-up under the Christmas tree, and I got the right-handed baseball glove meant for my brother Charlie”, Mr.
