(New York) U.S. authorities have opened an investigation into whether Wells Fargo bank broke laws by interviewing women and minority people for previously assigned jobs, the New York Times.
Posted at 7:33 p.m.
The daily recently reported testimonies from several current and former employees of the group, claiming that executives were interviewing people representing diversity, such as women and non-white people, for positions promised to other candidates.
According to them, it was mainly a question of improving the statistics on the efforts made by the bank to diversify its teams, in accordance with commitments made in 2020.
Following these revelations, Wells Fargo suspended its new hiring recommendations policy earlier this week so that hiring managers and bosses “understand how these recommendations should be implemented,” the company said in a statement. a statement on Thursday.
“Nobody should go to an interview without having a real chance of receiving an offer, period,” the bank also asserted in this message published “in response to the article by the New York Times “, but not confirming the opening of an investigation.
Wells Fargo says that the measures adopted since 2020 have increased diversity in its ranks, but that their implementation must be “consistent”.
According to New York Timeswhich cites people familiar with the matter, the investigation was opened by a new division of the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office dedicated to civil rights.
Wells Fargo boss Charles Scharf had to apologize in September 2020 for blaming the lack of diversity in the top ranks of his establishment on a lack of qualified black people.
He had arrived less than a year earlier at the head of the bank to restore the reputation of the establishment tarnished by a resounding scandal of fictitious accounts and several other cases relating to its commercial practices.