Category: News

Still Waiting for the NHTSA Whistleblower Rules The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has yet to publish the proposed rules for the NHTSA whistleblower program. This whistleblower program was authorized by the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act in December 2015. The terms of the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act required the Department of...

Financial Conduct Authority Details Decline in Whistleblower Tips A report earlier this month by the Financial Conduct Authority detailed the declining number of whistleblower tips reported to the British authorities. From 2014-15 to 2016-17, the number of reports has declined each year, resulting in just 900 cases in the last year. In 2014-15, the FCA...

A Record Award A media outlet, Financial Planning, is predicting that a pair of SEC whistleblowers will share an award of approximately $70.6 million out of the $307 million in regulatory fines against JPMorgan in 2015. Another outlet, Advisor Hub, put the number at $61 million instead. Either award amount would be the largest in...

Corporate Whistleblowing in 2017 The Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, Jane Norberg, and the Director of the CFTC Whistleblower Office, Christopher Ehrman, spoke recently at the Practicing Law Institute’s program on June 28, 2017, titled Corporate Whistleblowing in 2017. Their comments covered a wide range of hot topics in the field of...

U.S. Tax Court Denied Serial Whistleblower Anonymity The Tax Court has reminded IRS whistleblowers in a recent decision that the ability to proceed anonymously is not absolute. On June 28, 2017, the U.S. Tax Court denied an anonymous proceeding to Whistleblower 14377-16W after weighing the public interest in knowing who is using the Tax Court...

Whistleblower Retaliation Protections The Supreme Court will next term review a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit, Somers v. Digital Realty Trust, Inc., to determine whether the anti-retaliation protections of the Dodd-Frank Act protects employees who report misconduct internally. The Ninth Circuit, in a split decision, determined that the Dodd-Frank Act protected the employee from retaliation as a...

The Dangers of CHOICE Act The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved banking reforms in the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017 that would, if adopted, “gut many of the key banking reforms implemented after the financial crisis” according to a CNBC article. Apart from the overall impact on the Dodd-Frank Act, the law makes...

Proposed IRS Whistleblower Retaliation Protections Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Wyden have proposed the IRS Whistleblower Improvements Act of 2017 in the U.S. Senate today. If adopted, the law will provide for (1) enhanced communications between the Internal Revenue Service and whistleblowers, and (2) anti-retaliation protections for tax whistleblowers. Both would be significant improvements to the...