In an article in The Wall Street Journal and in a Wall Street Journal blog post, Jason Zuckerman, a whistleblower advocate, was quoted regarding regulations proposed by the SEC for its Whistleblower Reward Program:
“Whistleblowers should not be required to go to their companies first,” said Jason Zuckerman…. [He] didn’t like that the SEC is encouraging whistleblowers to go to the companies first. He called corporate-compliance programs “mostly a lot of window dressing” that “too often are misused” to retaliate against the whistleblower. He added: “If these programs really worked well, and really performed legitimate investigations and brought about corrective action, then the widespread fraud that helped bring down our economy would never have happened. It’s just common sense.”
Under the Dodd-Frank Act, whistleblowers who disclose original information to the SEC that leads to an enforcement action in which over $1,000,000 in sanctions is ordered are eligible for awards between 10% and 30% of the money collected.
