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Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan fought back on Tuesday against New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Washington, DC, after the first-year lawmaker had accused the bank of "funding the caging of". "Children" and had suggested that she incurs financial responsibility. for everything, oil spills to climate change.
The Ocasio-Cortez investigations come as activists increasingly seek to "mop up" political opponents by cutting their funds to banks and other financial service providers – a concerted effort that conservatives and libertarians say , threatens the freedom of expression.
The Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Appeared before Sloan on Tuesday as part of an extensive four-hour investigation into fraudulent misconduct cases widely reported during past years by Wells Fargo employees. But questioning Sloan, who was faced with bipartisan criticism at the hearing, Ocasio-Cortez, a self-proclaimed Socialist Democrat, went much further.
"Why has the bank been involved in caging children and funding for caging children?" Ocasio-Cortez asked at one point, apparently making reference to Trump's zero-tolerance immigration policy, which had resulted in an increase in the number of separations of parents suspected of criminal activity by the miners who accompanied them.
The White House has insisted that images widely disseminated on social media showing migrant children in large fenced-in detention rooms had been taken under the Obama administration.
Sloan simply replied, "I do not know how to answer that question, because we were not there."
"You financed, involved in the debt financing in CoreCivic and in the GEO group, is not it?" Ocasio-Cortez lobbied, citing two companies that run private detention and rehabilitation centers.
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"For a while, we have been involved in the financing of one of the companies, we are no longer in. I am not aware of the specific statement you are making. not involved, "said Sloan.
Ocasio-Cortez then asked if the bank was "responsible for the damage caused by climate change" because of its financing of fossil fuel companies, such as reinvestment costs.
"I do not know how you would calculate that," Sloan retorted.
The progressive New York arm wrestling, insisting, has advanced the prospect that Wells Fargo could be held accountable for any environmental disaster involving the Dakota Access Pipeline, which travels 1,200 miles across the Dakotas, Iowa and Illinois.
Wells Fargo was one of more than a dozen financial institutions to have contributed to the funding of this project, which its critics have described as environmentally unrespectful and unhealthy. encroachment on the lands of the Amerindians. The Conservatives said the project has significant economic benefits.
"In theory, if there was a leak from the Dakota Access Pipeline, why should not Wells Fargo pay for the cleanup, since it financed the construction of the pipeline itself?" Ocasio-Cortez asked. (In 2017, the Dakota Access Pipeline and a Food Pipeline spilled over 100 gallons of oil into North Dakota during separate incidents in March as teams prepared the controversial pipeline of 3.8 billions of dollars for its exploitation.)
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"Because we do not operate the pipeline," replied Sloan, seemingly surprised by the question. "We provide financing to the company that operates the pipeline." Our responsibility is to ensure that at the time of granting this loan, this client – we have a group of people in Wells Fargo, including an environmental monitoring group. "
Ocasio-Cortez is interrupted to ask why Wells Fargo would consider lending money to a project criticized for environmental reasons.
"Again, if we were one of the 17 or 19 banks to have funded this, it's because our team looked at the impact on the environment," he said. Sloan. "And we concluded that it was a risk that we were willing to take."
Democrats have called for the separation of Wells Fargo amidst a series of scandals.
(AP Photo / Rogelio V. Solis, File)
In conclusion of the hearing, Waters suggested to dissociate Wells Fargo. Waters also asked Sloan if the bank had become "too big to be managed".
"This hearing revealed that Wells Fargo had failed to clean up its law, it is too cumbersome to manage and the measures taken to date by the regulators are quite inadequate," said Waters.
The Republicans, too, entered Sloan, even though they did not go as far as Waters or Ocasio-Cortez.
"Whenever a new scandal breaks out, Wells Fargo promises to get to the bottom of things. This promises to ensure that this does not happen again, but a few months later we hear about another case of dishonest business practices or blatant mismanagement, "said the North Carolina representative, Patrick T. McHenry.
"Every member of this committee has voters in his state who have been affected by Wells Fargo," he added. "Our voters should be able to trust their own bank."
Brooke Singman of Fox News contributed to this report.
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