Bloomberg admits to e-mail data drama

Bloomberg LP quietly started notifying its Wall Street clients on Wednesday that crucial data about who has received e-mails have been missing for more than nine years, The Post has learned.

The financial-information and media giant disclosed that it has incomplete data for some people who had nonBloomberg e-mail addresses and had received messages, according to a “compliance notification” letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

Traders often send e-mails through their Bloomberg terminal to discuss deal information. Those candid — and sometimes crude — conversations have been used to go after crooked bankers in some of Wall Street’s biggest scandals.

It is not known if the missing info had hindered any criminal probe.

Bloomberg, which charges $20,000 a year for its terminals, provides communications to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators through custodial subpoenas on a regular basis, sources said.

Law enforcement officials and regulators often go directly to Bloomberg for e-mails and chats in order to establish chain of custody in cases that involve securities fraud and insider trading, current and former government prosecutors have told The Post.

“Those [e-mails] also get produced for the DOJ, FINRA and the SEC amongst other regulators,” one source told The Post. “If they are missing, it is not good.”

“No information was lost, no instant messages were affected, and only a very small proportion of recipient addresses were impacted in the message archive,” Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman, told The Post.

The missing data is available on background servers and is expected to be added by August, according to the notice.