Corporations who are repeat offenders of regulation violations must be penalized more strictly, said new Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra.
"FTC orders are not suggestions," Chopra, a Democrat, wrote in a statement.
“The credibility of law enforcement and regulatory agencies has been undermined by the real or perceived lax treatment of repeat offenders," Chopra said in the statement.
In his statement, Chopra said that banks including Wells Fargo and British bank HSBC got off lightly after repeated violations. He called for more stringent punishments, such as banning companies from engaging in certain practices, requiring companies to close businesses that are guilty of violations; requiring that senior executives be dismissed, and clawing back executive pay, Chopra said in the statement.
"When companies violate orders, this is usually the result of serious management dysfunction, a calculated risk that the payoff of skirting the law is worth the expected consequences, or both," Chopra wrote.
"Maintaining our credibility as public interest law enforcers requires that order violations be remedied and, when appropriate, penalized," Chopra wrote in the statement.
Chopra is an ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and is a former assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Talking Points Memo reported.
Companies such as Facebook and Google are under FTC consent orders for alleged violations such as Facebook’s promise to keep users’ data private, Talking Points Memo reported.
A five-person commission leads the FTC, with a chairman from the party of whoever is the president. Republicans have a 3-2 majority on the commission.
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