- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2024-09-05T18:19:00
Broker-dealer Nationwide Planning Associates and two affiliated investment advisers impeded potential whistleblowers from reporting misconduct to the Securities and Exchange Commission and have agreed to settle the charges for a combined $240,000.
New Jersey-based Nationwide Planning Associates will pay $70,000, investment adviser NPA Asset Management will pay $160,000, and state-registered investment adviser Blue Point Strategic Wealth Management will pay $10,000, the SEC said Wednesday in a press release.
The firms asked 11 retail clients to sign confidentiality agreements in connection with payments made by the entities to the clients’ investment accounts. The agreements contained “provisions that impeded clients from reporting potential securities law violations to the SEC by permitting communications only where the SEC first initiated an inquiry,” the SEC said.
THIS IS MEMBERS-ONLY CONTENT. To continue reading, choose one of the options below.
News and analysis for the well-informed compliance or audit exec. Select an option and click continue.
Annual Membership $499 Value offer
Full price one year membership with auto-renewal.
Membership $599
One-year only, no auto-renewal.
A federal court in Florida has lashed out at federal whistleblower programs by dismissing a mundane False Claims Act case against a medical practice on the grounds that the qui tam provisions of the FCA are unconstitutional.
Seven public companies will pay a total of $3 million in fines for requiring employees to sign agreements containing provisions that impeded their ability to report misconduct to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Singapore-based commodity trading company Trafigura will pay $55 million to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to settle charges related to fraud, manipulation, and impeding whistleblower communications with the agency.
A subsidiary of MetLife will pay more than $178,000 for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran when it provided insurance policies to entities in the United Arab Emirates owned or controlled by Iran.
A pharmaceutical company and its chief executive have agreed to pay $47 million to settle allegations first brought by whistleblowers, that the company paid kickbacks and filed false claims, the Department of Justice said.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined nearly 798 million euros (U.S. $841 million) by the European Commission to resolve the agency’s long-running investigation into alleged “abusive practices” by Facebook Marketplace.
