Senator Grassley is well-known for beefing up whistleblower protections and incentives to come forward to expose waste, fraud and abuse. The whistleblower provisions he authored that amended the federal False Claims Act have returned more than $48 billion to the federal Treasury that otherwise would have been lost to fraud. Similarly, Senator Grassley wrote the provisions improving the IRS whistleblower office to identify big-dollar tax fraud, leading to the recovery of more than $3 billion in taxes that otherwise would have been lost to fraud.
Maybe less well-known is that Senator Grassley helped to write the statute improving incentives for whistleblowers to come forward about securities fraud. He also helped to make sure the improved incentives got under way as Congress intended.
Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission reports that its awards to whistleblowers “have surpassed the $100 million mark with the program’s second-largest award of more than $22 million announced” in August.
The commission said: “The whistleblower program was established by Congress to incentivize whistleblowers with specific, timely and credible information about federal securities law violations to report to the SEC. To date, enforcement actions resulting from whistleblower tips have resulted in orders for more than $500 million in financial remedies, much of which has been returned to harmed investors.”
“Whether you have money in a pension invested in securities, or your job depends on a company’s access to capital, you want the securities markets to work well for you. Having whistleblowers on the case helps the SEC do its job,” Senator Grassley said.
A few recent pieces about SEC whistleblower victories are available here, here and here.
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