SEC Whistleblower Blog
SEC Officials Issue Stern Warning to Compliance Officers
March 21, 2012
Chief compliance officers (“CCOs”) received some stern warnings from Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) officials at the Investment Adviser Association’s annual compliance conference, held earlier this month in Arlington, Virginia. The website AdviserOne reported that Robert Plaze, deputy director of the SEC’s Division...
Texas District Court Decides Whether Dodd-Frank Covers Internal Whistleblowers
March 20, 2012
A motion to dismiss has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in a case brought by a whistleblower under the new Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) whistleblower program. In Asadi v. G.E. Energy (USA), LLC, G.E. Energy (“GE”) has moved to dismiss a whistleblower retaliation claim...
Five Years Later, IRS Whistleblower Still Waiting For Reward
March 9, 2012
A whistleblower who reported massive tax fraud on the part of multiple U.S. companies in 2007 is still waiting on a reward, reports the Washington Post. Joseph A. Insinga, formerly an executive at Rabobank Group, alleges that his company helped seven companies avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. He filed a...
FBI Financial Crimes Report Finds Escalating Securities and Commodities Fraud
February 29, 2012
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) released its “Financial Crimes Report to the Public” for fiscal years 2010-2011 earlier this week. A section on securities and commodities fraud should be of interest to individual who are thinking about providing information to the Securities Exchange Commission or the Commodities...
Anti-Whistleblower Bill Aims at Dismantling New SEC Whistleblower Program
February 15, 2012
Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill last year to enact a so-called “Whistleblower Improvement Act (H.R. 2483),” which would require employees to alert their management before blowing the whistle on corporate misconduct to regulators at the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Commodities Futures Trading...
SEC Whistleblower Exposes Alleged Vote-Fixing at Proxy Firms
February 13, 2012
The New York Post reported on February 12, 2012, that a corporate insider has filed a whistleblower tip with the SEC alleging that an employee of a leading proxy advisory firm has been selling information about upcoming shareholder votes to proxy solicitation firms, which assist corporations in convincing large shareholders to...
Qualcomm Whistleblower Allegations Lead to SEC, DOJ Probes
February 2, 2012
The FCPA blog, a blog dedicated to providing news and views about the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), reported today that Qualcomm was facing an investigation by the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) relating to whistleblower allegations made in December 2009...
David J. Marshall Comments on SEC Insider Trading Settlement
January 26, 2012
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued a press release earlier this week announcing that it had agreed to a settlement with a multi-billion dollar hedge fund advisory firm to settle insider-trading charges, just days after the SEC brought suit against the firm. Diamondback Capital Management LLC has agreed...
SEC Whistleblowers Given 15 New Notices of Covered Action
January 17, 2012
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Office of the Whistleblower recently posted 15 new Notices of Covered Action (“NOCAs”) on the Commission’s website. The SEC posts NOCAs when a company is penalized by monetary sanctions in excess of $1 million. The Dodd-Frank Act created the SEC Whistleblower Program, which...
DOJ Announces Bribery Charges Against Siemens Executives
December 22, 2011
The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced in a press release last week that it was bringing charges against eight former executives and agents of Siemens AG and its subsidiaries for allegedly engaging in a decade-long scheme to bribe senior Argentine government officials to secure, implement and enforce a $1 billion contract...
