- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Jeff Dale2023-08-04T18:14:00
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced awards totaling more than $104 million to seven whistleblowers whose information and assistance led to a successful enforcement action.
The combined award is the fourth largest in the whistleblower program’s history, the agency said in a press release Friday.
“[S]pecific and credible information plays an integral part in the SEC’s enforcement efforts,” Creola Kelly, chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, said in the release. “These whistleblowers provided information that helped enforcement staff detect and prosecute wrongdoing in a timely manner.”
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.
Commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE agreed to pay $375,000 to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that its separation agreements violated whistleblower protections.
The SEC announced a $104 million award split among seven whistleblowers, but the fact nearly a dozen claimants contacted the agency seeking to provide information related to one action should be notable to companies regarding the stakes of the current whistleblower landscape.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in a case, Murray v. UBS Securities, that has focused attention on the burden of proof whistleblowers reporting misconduct internally must meet to establish retaliation by their public company employer.
Two pairs of claimants will receive whistleblower awards totaling more than $98 million and $24 million, respectively, for information they provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission that led to an enforcement action.
Discrimination against whistleblowers in the U.K. has risen to such a level that the government may need to actively pursue plans to afford greater legal protection, as well as introduce financial awards to compensate for their “career suicide.”
The Department of Justice released the details of its long-awaited corporate whistleblower awards pilot program that will prioritize reporting in areas of corporate crime not currently covered by existing whistleblower programs.
