This year’s National Whistleblower Day celebration, held by the National Whistleblower Center (NWC) on July 30, will feature two speakers from key government agencies that are integral in helping encourage and protect whistleblowers.
These notable individuals are Erick Martinez, Director of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Whistleblower Office, and Raagnee Beri, Director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Whistleblower Office.
The IRS Whistleblower Office is responsible for administering the IRS Whistleblower Program, which administers claims for awards from people who report information about tax violations. Under Martinez’s leadership in Fiscal Year 2024, the IRS collected $474.7 million in sanctions based on information from whistleblowers, $123.5 million of which they paid to whistleblowers in awards.
As Martinez said, “Whistleblowers serve as an invaluable deterrent against non-compliance with tax laws and are critical in our efforts to reduce the tax gap.”
Similarly, the CFTC Whistleblower Office manages the administration of awards to individuals who report possible violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Since its first issuance of an award in 2014, the CFTC has collected over $3.2 billion in sanctions and has given out of $390 million of that to whistleblowers themselves. Raagnee Beri, who was recently named as director of the CFTC Whistleblower Office, previously served as a trial attorney in the CFTC Division of Enforcement and as a senior assistant general counsel in the Office of General Counsel’s Litigation Branch.
“These programs are on the front lines of whistleblower disclosures,” said Stephen M. Kohn, NWC Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors, “They have an impeccable reputation for maintaining confidentiality, and their staffs have conducted some of the most important and meaningful investigations into misconduct and wrongdoing in U.S. history.”
The National Whistleblower Day 2026 celebration will be held on July 30 on Capitol Hill. Additional speakers are to be announced.
