Recently, there has been renewed interest in the implementation of whistleblower awards in the United Kingdom. In a new article for the Oxford Business Law Review, two advocates explain the need for reforms allowing for whistleblower awards in the UK and detail how in doing so the UK could bolster global anti-corruption enforcement in a period where the U.S. is retreating on the issue.
In the article, “UK Whistleblower Reform is Crucial for Global Anti-Corruption Enforcement,” Benjamin Calitri and Kate Reeves of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto note that the UK whistleblowers have flocked to the U.S. in huge numbers since the Dodd-Frank Act established the SEC Whistleblower Program in 2010.
However, Calitiri and Reeves point to the Trump administration’s pause on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement, which is covered under the SEC Whistleblower Program, as a sign that UK whistleblowers looking to safely and effectively report bribery and other forms of corruption may need to look elsewhere.
Since the Trump pause on FCPA enforcement, advocates have noted that other countries will need to fill the void in anti-corruption enforcement, including by offering whistleblower awards.
“The UK is well suited to fill this potential global anti-corruption enforcement void by implementing long overdue changes to its whistleblowing framework,” Calitri and Reeves write. “The UK’s announcement of a new tax whistleblower reward scheme, modeled off of US whistleblower award programs, is a positive sign. However, further action to create a whistleblower program in the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), modelled on the Dodd-Frank Act programs, is still needed.”
According to Calitri and Reeves, the current whistleblower system in the UK “fails to incentivize whistleblowing, fails to adequately protect whistleblowers, and fails to include an enforcement mechanism through which to respond to whistleblower tips about corruption and fraud.”
They note that over the past year, the Director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) Nick Ephgrave and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading think tank, have both come out in favor of implementing whistleblower awards.
“In the wake of the publication of the RUSI report, it is evident that a whistleblower reward program is necessary for agencies like the Serious Fraud Office to maximize their white-collar crime enforcement efforts,” they write in conclusion. “Since the establishment of the Dodd-Frank whistleblower programs, the United States has filled a critical role in global anti-corruption enforcement efforts. Now that US plans to lead anti-corruption efforts are ambiguous, UK whistleblower reforms have become more urgent than ever. British policy makers should act swiftly to implement an effective system of whistleblower rewards programs in light of this precarity.”
Listen to Whistleblower of the Week:
Advancing Whistleblower Rights in the UK: Kate Reeves
Further Reading:
UK Whistleblower Reform is Crucial for Global Anti-Corruption Enforcement
