Skip to content
Markets

BNP Paribas Staff Abused Monitoring Tool to Spy on Boss’s Bonus

  • RedOwl monitoring tool could access employee pay information
  • Compliance staff looked up bonus of senior staff member
A logo on a BNP Paribas SA bank branch in Marseille, France.

A logo on a BNP Paribas SA bank branch in Marseille, France.

Photographer: Theo Giacometti/Bloomberg

In early 2019, BNP Paribas SA compliance staff were handed a powerful new tool designed to help them police a massive trading division that handled billions of euros of transactions each day.

Called RedOwl, it was monitoring software that let front-line supervisors search through thousands of employees’ emails and documents to suss out wrongdoing. But the bank soon discovered someone should have been watching the watchdogs.