Record whistleblower award went to a tipster on Ericsson
wsj.com
wsj.com
I think I support this program. At first I was thinking that the commission should be capped at, say, 30 million USD. My thinking being that anyone who might become a whistleblower would be sufficiently motivated by that amount and paying more won’t increase the number of whistleblowers. But maybe the problem with that is that Ericsson could then offer to pay the would-be whistleblower 100 million USD to keep their mouth shut? Perhaps having no cap ensures that if someone wants to rat you out, you won’t be able to offer them enough money to talk them out of it. Just thinking aloud. (Because on the face of it, it’s insane.)
So yes, I totally support the SECs whistleblower program. Explicitely including the fact people can fax their tips to them, or use attorneys for a layer of semi anonymity.
>And three whistleblowers, all represented by Jordan Thomas, were awarded a total of $83 million.
>Even now, does Merrill Lynch know who the whistleblowers were, who your clients were?
>THOMAS: No, they don't.
>GOLDSTEIN: Wow.
>THOMAS: The same with JP Morgan. If we do our job well, our clients can and do continue working at the organizations in which they reported even though they could buy an island. Some of them like working, so they keep working.
>GOLDSTEIN: I mean, not to be glib, but there is the, like, hey, Bob (ph), how'd you show up in a Lamborghini today? Well...
>THOMAS: (Laughter) Yeah. No, some people don't show their money.
>GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. Yeah.
>THOMAS: And this - they - yeah, I call them secret millionaires, you know, people who won a whistleblower award but choose to keep working.
>GOLDSTEIN: At the same firm.
>THOMAS: Yeah. It does happen. People's relationship with their work is in some ways like family after a period of time, and breaking it off is hard.
However, over time the program has also been suborned by former members of the SEC
> The Wall Street Journal estimated that of more than 52,000 tips submitted to the agency in the decade to September 2021, just 0.5% resulted in awards. Critics grumble that the sec is less than transparent about the way it sorts tips and awards informants
> Perhaps the gravest concern, however, is over a secondary business that is growing up alongside the sec process. In a forthcoming study Alexander Platt of the University of Kansas’s law school suggests that a handful of law firms, often staffed by former employees of the sec, are responsible for winning an outsize share of whistleblower awards. Those firms, in turn, often charge their whistleblower clients high legal fees, perhaps more than a third of the value of the eventual award. But informants who want their tips investigated may do well to hire them. Using data from 2012 to 2020, Mr Platt found that former sec regulators were involved in about one-third of cases where whistleblowers used attorneys. He reckons that about a quarter of all the money dispersed by the sec scheme has gone to recipients represented by law firms that have hired former staff from the agency. And that share appears to be growing: from 2021 to the middle of 2022, what he calls “revolving-door firms” raked in more than 40% of the funds awarded. One implication, finds Mr Platt, is that the arrangement risks looking unhealthily close.
The Economist (https://archive.is/vwYXu)
AFAIK criminal organisations make sure that those with privileged information get dirty as well, especially in the mafia making them commit a murder or something unforgivable. Sure, in a telco bribing public officials case this wouldn't be something drastic but all the people involved must be already corrupt. You don't pitch bribery as a business idea in an open meeting with the interns.
Money makes a lot of problems go away - with this kind of money, one could buy a Hawaiian 10-20 million dollar home in a gated luxury community where access is gated and staff routinely patrol, pay the fully loaded cost of two 100$/hr personal armed guards for a 24/7 security detail ($876,800 per year each), and still have something like 100 million to spend on whatever you want before you die.
If you’re a jilted businessman, sure, maybe you’re still willing to try something insane like hiring assassins or trying to get control of your security staff out of pure spite, but frankly, for every individual at the company besides perhaps the largest shareholders (who are actually the most risk-adverse people with regard to the danger of such a plan becoming public), it’s not actually their money and they’d rather just move on because it doesn’t affect their paycheck.
I learned it does not matter what citizenship you have to participate.
But where’s corrupt.co, where I can find the shadiest possible companies to maximize my potential whistleblowing income?
On second thought, maybe Blind is already this.
Check out "crypto" and "web3".
Now there's an understatement.