In an interview with Thomson Reuters last Friday, the Director of the SEC Enforcement Division, Robert Khuzami, stated that the quality of tips being submitted to the SEC’s new Whistleblower Program has improved in recent months, probably due in part to more whistleblowers being represented by lawyers.  The SEC Whistleblower Program was established in May 2011 [...]

The SEC Whistleblower Program rules provide a number of protections against retaliation for employees who blow the whistle on securities violations.  One particularly important protection is found in Rule 240.21F-17(a), which provides as follows: No person may take any action to impede an individual from communicating directly with the Commission staff about a possible securities [...]

The Project on Government Oversight (“POGO”) Blog recently wrote about an interview with two key whistleblower officials.  The website Securities Docket recently hosted a webcast with Sean McKessy, the Chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC’s”) Office of the Whistleblower (“OWB”), and Vincente Martinez, Director of the Whistleblower Office at the Commodity Futures Trading [...]

Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Chairman, Mary L. Schapiro, and Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, Sean McKessy, recently spoke before a Practicing Law Institute seminar entitled “The SEC Speaks in 2012.”  Both officials trumpeted the success of the new whistleblower program and the value that whistleblowers provide to the SEC’s enforcement objectives [...]

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 of Investment Management, was joined by Sean McKessy, chief of the SEC’s [...]

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 brought by [...]

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 whistleblower claim [...]

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 Futures Trading Commission under their new whistleblower [...]

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 Commission (CFTC).  The Grimm bill presents a direct threat to [...]

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 vote their shares in support [...]