On October 31, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a $10 million whistleblower award. The whistleblower qualified for an award for voluntarily providing the SEC with original information that led to a successful enforcement action.
According to the SEC, the whistleblower “provided important documents and met twice with Enforcement staff” and “the charges in the covered action had a close nexus with the whistleblower’s allegations, which were critical to the underlying investigation.”
The award order further adds that “the law enforcement interests here are high, as
[the whistleblower’s] information led to the return of a significant amount of money to harmed investors.”
Through the SEC Whistleblower Program, qualified whistleblowers are entitled to awards of 10-30% of the sanctions collected in the enforcement action aided by their disclosure. Thus, in each whistleblower-assisted case, 70-90% of sanctions are returned to harmed investors or the U.S. Treasury.
“The whistleblower awarded today provided information that resulted in the return of a significant amount of money to harmed investors,” said Creola Kelly, Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower. “This illustrates how the Whistleblower Program works to benefit, via financial remediation, investors who are victimized by those who violate our securities laws.”
Since issuing its first award in 2012, the SEC has awarded over $1.3 billion to over 280 whistleblowers. WNN recently published a series of exclusives discrediting critiques of the whistleblower program, including allegations that the program enriches an exclusive circle of attorneys.
“The SEC Whistleblower Program has been an immense success,” whistleblower attorney Stephen M. Kohn told WNN.
“Most of the over $5 billion in funds recovered from fraudsters based on whistleblower complaints are returned to the U.S. Treasury or used to compensate harmed investors. Notably, due to the structure of the award program, zero dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on awarding whistleblowers and whistleblower attorneys,” Kohn, a founding partner at Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, explains.
Further Reading:
SEC Awards More Than $10 Million to Whistleblower
WNN Exclusive: The SEC Whistleblower Program Enriches the Treasury, Not an Inner Circle of Attorneys