Five hundred members of staff at Nationwide Building Society's HQ in Swindon have been disciplined over an offensive email, which was allegedly racist.
Those members of staff who passed the mail on were given written warnings, while those who received it, but did nothing about it, were given verbal warnings.
There has been no official comment from the building society, which is the town's second largest employer with 4,000 members of staff.
But an employee, who declined to be named, said: "It certainly caused quite a furore in the building.
"A lot of members of staff have been disciplined as a result of it.
"Although it's fair to say there was an email going round a couple of weeks involving Osama Bin Laden and that didn't appear to cause any problems."
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