This year’s National Whistleblower Day event will be Tuesday, July 30. It will be broadcast live from Capitol Hill via Facebook.
If you are going to blow the whistle, do it right, says Stephen M. Kohn, chair of National Whistleblower Center. He delivered that message Monday morning during an a live interview on The Hill’s morning news show.
“There are fantastic whistleblower laws,” he said. “But there are other ways people blow the whistle and they end up in prison. So, do it right.”
Kohn uses former banker Bradley Birkenfeld as as example of someone who did it wrong, then did it right. When he first helped expose a massive Swiss banking tax evasion scheme, he went to jail. Then Kohn took him to the IRS whistleblower office, where Birkenfeld was awarded a record $104 million.
To hear from Birkenfeld himself, tune into this year’s National Whistleblower Day, Tuesday, July 30. It will be broadcast live from Capitol Hill on Facebook. It is one of several events and panels underway this week as part of the annual Whistleblower Summit.
For more on the week’s events, check out the live tweets from Friday and Monday events on the Government Accountability Project twitter feed.
Here are links to NWC information on just a few of the the laws Kohn refers to:
The False Claims Act qui tam provision is one of the strongest whistleblower protection laws in the United States.
A major piece of reform legislation covering commodities and securities actions worldwide. The Act is meant primarily to promote financial stability by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system.
Whistleblowers worldwide can qualify for monetary rewards when reporting wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, illegal poaching, and illegal fishing when the information results in a successful enforcement action.
The Internal Revenue Act permits individuals who provide original information to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) about a violation of the tax laws or the underpayment of taxes to obtain a monetary reward if their information results in a sanction against the tax law violator.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) targets bribery of foreign government officials by publicly traded corporations or U.S. persons. It is the most powerful and effective transnational anticorruption law in the world.