Morgan Stanley's Troubles Continue: $12.5 M in Fines for Mishandled email
On September 27, 2007, The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced a settlement with Morgan Stanley & Co. to resolve charges that the firm's former affiliate, Morgan Stanley DW, Inc. (MSDW), failed on numerous occasions to provide emails to claimants in arbitration proceedings as well as to regulators - while representing that the destruction of the firm's email servers in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center resulted in the loss of all pre-9/11 email. In fact, the firm had millions of pre-9/11 emails that had been restored to the firm's active email system using back-up tapes that had been stored in another location.
The settlement provides for distribution of $9.5 million to two groups of customers who had arbitration claims against the firm. FINRA also imposed a $3 million fine on the firm for its failure to provide pre-9/11 emails and updates to a supervisory manual.
“The integrity of our process demands that brokerage firms comply with their obligations to search diligently for, and provide in a timely way, information and documents required in arbitration proceedings and regulatory investigations," said Susan Merrill, FINRA Executive Vice President and Chief of Enforcement." The action announced today underscores FINRA's commitment to ensuring that firms live up to those obligations. We are particularly pleased that this unique settlement directs the bulk of the monetary sanction to the customers in arbitrations, to remedy MSDW's discovery failures."
FINRA found that MSDW failed to provide pre-9/11 emails to claimants in numerous arbitration proceedings and in response to three regulatory inquiries during the period from October 2001 through March 2005. MSDW made statements in numerous arbitration proceedings and to the former NASD, New York Stock Exchange Regulation and the Massachusetts Securities Division that those emails had been destroyed. Those statements were found not to be true. In fact, MSDW possessed millions of pre-9/11 emails that had been restored to the firm's system shortly after Sept.11, 2001 using backup tapes. Many other emails were maintained on individual users' computers and had not been affected by the events of 9/11. Among the matters where MSDW failed to produce e-mail was an NASD investigation that resulted in an August 2005 settlement with the firm.
FINRA also found that MSDW later destroyed many of the pre-9/11 emails it did possess. The firm did so in two ways - by overwriting backup tapes that had been used to restore the emails from 11 of its 12 servers to the firm's system, and by allowing users of the firm's email system to permanently delete the emails over an extended period of time. As a result, between September 2001 and March 2005, MSDW deleted millions of pre-9/11 emails from the firm's systems.
In settling this matter, Morgan Stanley neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to the entry of FINRA's findings.
