Federal Securities Law Source

Archives: Whistleblower Issues

Subscribe to Whistleblower Issues RSS Feed

FCPA officials point to dollars-and-cents benefits to self-disclosure and cooperation

High ranking officials in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on March 12 that companies that fail to self-report overseas bribes will face tougher Foreign Criminal Practices Act (FCPA) fines. While speaking at the Georgetown Law Center Corporate Counsel Institute in Washington, Patrick Stokes, deputy chief of the DOJ’s FCPA … Continue Reading

Whistleblowers wanted; Holder seeks increased compensation for financial crime informants

In the first major public comment about white collar crime in more than a year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) called for an increase in compensation for whistleblowers under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA). Senior DOJ officials, in three separate speeches, appealed to whistleblowers to come forward with information about crimes … Continue Reading

U.S. Supreme Court extends whistleblower protection to employees of a public company’s private contractors

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decided earlier this week that whistleblower protection under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 includes employees of a public company’s private contractors and subcontractors. In Lawson v. FMR LLC, the court, in a majority opinion written by Justice Ginsburg, concluded that extending protection to employees of a contractor … Continue Reading

SEC Makes First Whistleblower Award

On August 21, 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that it has paid out the first award under its whistleblower award program, which was established under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act  a little more than a year ago.  The SEC established the whistleblower program to allow it to award between 10% and 30% of … Continue Reading

Wall Street Journal Article Details How SEC Inadvertently Revealed The Identity of A Whistleblower During An Investigation UPDATED On April 27, 2012

An article by Scott Patterson and Jenny Strasburg in the Wall Street Journal today revealed that, during an investigation of Pipeline Trading Systems LLC, an SEC attorney showed a witness a notebook which included handwritten notes from a whistleblower, and the witness recognized the handwriting and was able to tell his employers who the whistleblower … Continue Reading

First Circuit Rules That SOX Whistleblower Protections Do Not Apply to Employees of a Contractor or Subcontractor of a Public Company

In a February 3, 2012 Opinion, the First Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Massachusetts federal court decision and held that, while the whistleblower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act apply to employees of "public companies" (i.e., a company with registered securities or one that files reports under Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act), they do … Continue Reading

SEC Whistleblower’s Office Releases First Annual Report Including a Snapshot of the Types of Tips Received Thus Far

The SEC’s Office of Whistleblower has released its first Annual Report on the Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Program for Fiscal Year 2011. The Report (available here) points out that because the Final Rules became effective August 12, 2011 (discussed here), there were only seven weeks of whistleblower tip data available for fiscal year 2011. The Report includes an … Continue Reading

New Bills Proposed in Congress to Impact Dodd-Frank and Whistleblower Provisions

Two recent posting in the blogosphere discuss the long-threatened Congressional efforts to roll back the impact of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. First, a post from Jim Hamilton’s World of Securities Litigation discusses Congressional efforts to repeal specific regulations and pass fundamental and structural reform of the federal rulemaking system. Second, … Continue Reading

SEC Adopts Final Whistleblower Rules

At an open meeting on Wednesday morning, the SEC adopted final rules to implement Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Act regarding securities whistleblower incentives and protection. One of the significant highlights of the final rules is that the Commission has sought to struck a compromise between the importance of the corporation’s compliance programs on the … Continue Reading
LexBlog