CFTC penalizes Société Générale $450K for failure to report FX swap trades on time

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today issued an Order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Societe Generale SA (EPA: GLE) for failing to properly report certain non-deliverable forward transactions to a swap data repository (SDR), and failing to timely report to an SDR a large number of FX swap, FX forward, and non-deliverable forward transactions, in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC Regulations.

Société Générale is a swap dealer headquartered in Paris, France that has been provisionally registered with the CFTC in that capacity since December 31, 2012.

The CFTC Order requires Société Générale to pay a $450,000 civil monetary penalty and to cease and desist from committing further violations of the CEA and CFTC Regulations, as charged.

The Order finds that in July 2014 Société Générale implemented a software update to its FX trading platform which led to the trading platform incorrectly coding Société Générale’s counterparty as the reporting counterparty for certain FX swap, FX forward, and non-deliverable forward transactions, which resulted in no reports being made to the SDR regarding the swaps.

According to the Order, Société Générale did not discover the error until January 2015, and it was not until April 2015 that Société Générale was able to fix it.

The Order finds that Société Générale initiated a project to identify trades affected by the coding error and in September 2015 notified CFTC staff about its failure to report. Per the Order, Société Générale back-loaded approximately 51,821 unreported transactions in October 2015 and in April and May 2016 made submissions to its SDR for approximately 2,024 non-deliverable forward transactions.

To view the official Order letter from the CFTC click here (PDF).

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