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

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.

Within months, BNP was conducting an internal probe into allegations that a trio of compliance staffers who were testing the application had used it to look up the bonus of their manager, as well ...