Whistleblowers were big news in 2019. Here’s a sample.

The New Yorker declares it the year of the whistleblower, and we offer some of our popular posts of 2019.

From The New Yorker:

This year, as one scandal after another played out in the news, it was easy to become overwhelmed. Amid all the noise, there’s been a common theme in many of the reports—the increased profile and significance of whistle-blowers. It’s hard to think of another recent period when the act of whistle-blowing has had such a consequential impact on our politics and culture.

From the Whistleblower Protection Blog:

Ukraine whistleblower

• Can the Ukraine call whistleblower remain anonymous? And, who is obligated to protect his or her anonymity?
• The journalist and the whistleblower. Every journalist who has ever worked with a whistleblower knows these are fraught relationships.
• Remember when the whistleblower complaint was seen as “hearsay”? Turns out secondhand whistleblower “reports are 47.7% more likely than firsthand reports to be substantiated by management, which suggests that management views many secondhand reports as credible.“

Climate Corruption Campaign

• NWC announces new program; Only company insiders would know of climate change-related risks concealed from shareholders, the IRS and the public. The campaign will help these insiders secure confidential whistleblower status.
• More here. Can whistleblowers save the Amazon rainforest?

Government Contracting

• Ernie Fitzgerald, a man once called “America’s most famous whistleblower” died in February at the age of 92.He exposed $600 toilets.
• Bunny Greenhouse was profiled on CBS for her work exposing a no-bid government contract for the vice-president’s former employer, Halliburton.

Money laundering

• Danske Bank whistleblower Howard Wilkinson appeared on the news program 60 Minutes. He exposed a $230 billion Russian money laundering scheme at the bank’s Estonia branch.
• Bradley Birkenfeld, the Swiss bank whistleblower who outed Americans’ secret USB bank accounts, appeared at an offshore fraud and financial services conference in Miami in April.

More environmental whistleblowers

• Whistleblowers could help expose wildlife criminals in remote Alaska-Yukon.
• Citizens involved in spotting wildlife crime need whistleblower protections.

Health care

• of pain clinics that abruptly shut down last summer faces five whistleblower lawsuits accusing it of defrauding Medicare by billing for hundreds of unnecessary urine drug tests.
• Duke University pays $112 million fine in faulty research case.

EU

• In April, the European Union approved whistleblower protection rule.

IRS

Do I Have A Good Case For The IRS Whistleblower Program?

Elijah Cummings

1951–2019: Whistleblowers lose a champion