CitigroupGlobal Markets Inc. has agreed to pay a $7 million penalty andadmit wrongdoing to settle charges by the SEC that a computer coding errorcaused it to provide the agency with incomplete blue sheet information abouttrades it executed.
According to the SEC's order instituting a settledadministrative proceeding, the coding error occurred in the software thatCitigroup Global Markets used from May 1999 to April 2014 to process SEC requestsfor blue sheet data. During that 15-year period, the company omitted 26,810securities transactions from its responses to more than 2,300 blue sheetrequests. After discovering the coding error, Citigroup Global Markets failedto report the incident to the SEC or take any steps to produce the omitted datauntil nine months later.