Apr 17
There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the approximately $800,000 spent on a lavish 2010 Las Vegas conference hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA). The GSA handles government real estate and other non-military procurement. Susan Brita, a GSA deputy administrator, was the whistleblower who first raised the issue, which has since …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/04/gsa-whistleblower-testifies-regarding-government-waste/
Mar 19
A former bank executive filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for failing to pay him a whistleblower award for information submitted in 2007. As initially reported in the Washington Post, Joseph Insinga … alleged that Rabobank Group, where he worked as an executive for more than a decade, helped seven companies avoid hundreds …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/03/irs-ignoring-payments-required-by-its-whistleblower-program/
Mar 10
Michael Woodford has been recognized with the 2012 Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (“ACFE”) for the whistleblower actions that allegedly led to his ousting from the company. As the new CEO of Olympus Corporation, Mr, Woodford exposed alleged fraud at his own company. The allegations involved improper accounting attributed to …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/03/former-ceo-recognized-for-whistleblower-action/
Feb 16
In a February 3, 2012 Opinion, the First Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Massachusetts District Court 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 not …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/02/first-circuit-limits-sox-whistleblower-protection/
Feb 03
By a 3-2 vote, the Department of Labor’s Administrative Review Board (ARB) limited the jurisdiction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) whistleblower protection outside the United States. The case is Villanueva v. Core Laboratories, NV, ARB No. 09-108, ALJ No. 2009-SOX-6 (ARB Dec. 22, 2011) (en banc). The ARB received multiple amicus briefs setting out the …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/02/dols-arb-limits-sox-whistleblower-protections-to-u-s-employees/
Jan 09
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act added requirements for the SEC to maintain a whistleblower reporting capability, and to annually report on the results each fiscal year. Section 922 of Dodd-Frank added Section 21F to the Securities Exchange Act, requiring the SEC to make monetary awards to those who voluntarily provide original …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2012/01/sec-whistleblower-program-collects-a-surprising-number-of-complaints/
Oct 29
On October 27, the SEC announced that: The Securities and Exchange Commission today ordered the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to hire an independent consultant and undertake other remedial measures to improve its policies, procedures, and training … The SEC’s order finds that on Aug. 7, 2008, the Director of FINRA’s Kansas City District Office …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2011/10/sec-slaps-finra/
Sep 27
Accounting and consulting firm BDO USA, LLP conducted an August 2011 annual national telephone survey entitled “The 2011 BDO Board Survey”. Interviewers spoke directly to 101 board members for public companies with revenues ranging from $250 million to $750 million. Although the survey covered other corporate governance matters, this post involves required whistleblower reporting systems. …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2011/09/surprising-survey-covering-sec-whistleblower-program/
May 27
The Ninth Circuit took a narrow reading of the whistleblower protections provided under Sarbanes-Oxley, and thereby eliminated the applicability of any whistleblower protection. The would-be whistleblowers were two internal auditors at Boeing. Both employees spoke to a newspaper reporter regarding their concerns. The reporter included the employees’ information in an article entitled “Computer security faults …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2011/05/sox-whistleblower-protections-again-interpreted-narrowly/
Mar 23
The Internal Revenue Service paid a $1.1 million reward to an anonymous whistleblower for information that exposed a tax fraud by Enron, Bankers Trust and others before the company collapsed. The whistleblower, a Wall Street banker who has chosen to remain anonymous to protect his job and career, received the maximum reward of 15 percent. …
Permanent link to this article: http://betweenthenumbers.net/2011/03/large-irs-whistleblower-payoff-encourages-others/
Loading ...