President Donald Trump writing on his popular social media platform Twitter stated that the fines and penalties against third-largest U.S. bank Wells Fargo & Co might be increased due to the ongoing sale scandal.
Trump wrote on his Twitter handle “Fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped, as has incorrectly been reported, but will be pursued and, if anything, substantially increased. I will cut Regs but make penalties severe when caught cheating!”
It was reported on Thursday that the new Ag of U.S. consumer finance is looking into Wells Fargo and whether they need to pay tens of millions of dollars after they were accused of mortgage lending abuse. This was revealed by three sources close to the situation. The Tweet made by Trump though might seem like a reaction to those reports from Reuters.
Wells Fargo has been hit by a sales scandal after their employees registered millions of their customers in products that they neither wanted nor needed.
In 2016, the bank had to shell out a record 100 million fine to the CFPB over an earlier scandal.
When the White House was contacted about Trump’s tweet, the questions were directed to a spokesman for Mick Mulvaney, the new interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
John Czwartack who is a senior adviser at CFPB stated that the regulatory body isn’t inclined to make any comment on matters that are still pending, though he added that “as a matter of principle, Acting Director Mulvaney shares the President’s firm commitment to punishing bad actors and protecting American consumers.”
President Trump has vowed to reverse some of the rules that were passed by his predecessor Barack Obama that limited the activity of the Wall Street after the 2007-09 financial crisis. The financial sector though is hoping that the regulatory bodies in the country will take a less aggressive approach to fines under the current administration.
Those wishes were made last week when the head of CFPB Mulvaney briefed reporters that he was currently reviewing over a 100 enforcement actions currently in the works, with some lawsuits that are being settled or investigated. He further added that he is going to delay two enforcement actions, though he declined to name them.
The spokesman of Wells Fargo Mark Folk declined to make any comment on Trump’s tweet.
