IRS Whistleblower Complaints in 2015 The Internal Revenue Service received 87,000 information referrals in Fiscal Year 2015 from the public submitting Form 3949-A to report suspected tax evasion, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report on the IRS referral programs which also included comments about the Office of the Whistleblower. The report concludes...
Retaliation against whistleblowers by their employer is a problem that touches us very personally as whistleblower attorneys. We see the impact first hand through the employees contacting us, both in our clients and potential clients. It is a very unfortunate aspect of modern whistleblowing. Although we attempt to minimize the potential for it where possible,...
Novartis agreed to settle civil charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday into its healthcare practices in China. The settlement of the investigation into the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will result in a payment of more than $25 million to the SEC by Novartis. The SEC alleged that China based units of Novartis made...
Health care kickbacks continue to be a hot area of whistleblower practice under the False Claims Act in 2016, with two more settlement announcements already this week. A Pennsylvania medical supply company providing masks to suppliers of durable medical equipment (DME) for patients with sleep apnea settled a False Claims Act case today for $34.8...
For years, many pharmaceutical and medical device companies have paid doctors for speaking engagements as well as offered free meals, gifts and entertainment. A new study by ProPublica analyzing drugmaker spending and Medicare prescription data to conclude that these payments and gifts translate into higher patient prescriptions for brand-name drugs. The analysis concludes that physicians...
It turns out that one of the top ranked websites for statistics concerning whistleblowers is a random business site pushing marketing services. It mentions the False Claims Act twice and doesn’t even mention the Internal Revenue Service or Securities and Exchange Commission. Published in 2015, it’s obvious that someone just went out there to research...
President Obama announced the nomination of D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court at a press conference at 11 AM today. The pick will now be sent to the Senate, which the U.S. Constitution provides with the power to provide advice and consent to the President on the appointment....
Employees continued to report misconduct internally at higher levels and those reports were confirmed at an all-time high in 2015, according to the Navex Global annual Ethics and Compliance Hotline Benchmark Report released yesterday. Navex analyzes data from 860,000 reports across 2,300 organizations globally, including information from compliance hotlines, and compiles the information into its...
Multiple whistleblowers appear the norm these days in securities lawsuits, if the two most recent award determinations are any indication of the success of the Dodd-Frank whistleblower program. Yesterday, the Securities & Exchange Commission released a reward determination authorizing payment of $1.8 million to one individual and $130,000 to be split between two other whistleblowers....
The global problem of bribery isn’t going away anytime soon. Forty percent of all compliance officers reported the risk of bribery and corruption at their company will increase this year, according to the Kroll and Ethisphere Institute report released this morning: The 2016 Anti-Bribery and Corruption Report. Just 8 percent believed that their corruption risks...