The Chamber of Commerce has commenced a well-financed and aggressive lobbying campaign to undermine America’s most effective whistleblower law, the False Claims Act. To justify its anti-whistleblower campaign the Chamber published a report entitled, “Fixing the False Claims Act: the Case For Compliance-Focused Reforms.” The purpose of this blog series is to combat the Chamber’s misinformation, and explain why the False Claims Act must be protected.
Fact Number 7:
As documented by the ERC and the Booth School studies, corporate culture remains hostile toward whistleblowers. The FCA and other whistleblower reward laws address both the short-term and long-term problems caused by the realistic fear experienced by employees who consider blowing the whistle.
- Reward laws create an incentive for employees to take a risk and report fraud.
- Reward laws establish safe and federally protected channels for reporting.
- Reward laws place a premium on raising concerns that are valid, well documented, and provable. Unlike retaliation laws, the only way to prevail in a reward law is to be right about the wrongdoing.
- Reward laws give employees a choice: report internally or report through a federally protected channel that can offer real financial security. This creates powerful motivation for companies to compete with the federal programs by creating independent and effective compliance programs.
- Reward laws provide a safe channel for employees to report their allegations to law enforcement confidentially, and, if appropriate, obtain become a Confidential Informant.
- Reward laws permit employees who disclose their fraud-based allegations to the government to obtain protection from retaliation as government witnesses under the federal obstruction of justice laws.
- Reward laws permit the appropriate authorities to obtain evidence of fraud, and conduct effective investigations designed to protect the public interest, not to protect corporations from liability.
“Reward laws create an incentive for employees to take a risk and report fraud.”
Whistleblowers and their supporters are strongly urged to read this blog series and share it with friends. In addition, an Action Alert has been issued by the National Whistleblower Center so members of the public inform their representatives that the False Claims Act should not be “reformed” as proposed by the Chamber.