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Anyone Can Whistle

By Lauren J. Resnick, Tracy Cole and Essence Liburd

While 2012 didn't bring the Mayan Apocalypse, it did live up to its promise as a good year to be a whistleblower. A former UBS banker imprisoned for tax fraud received a whistleblower award of $104 million ' reportedly the largest individual federal payout in U.S. history. See http://goo.gl/vmHFe. The federal government boasted a new record in recoveries from cases filed under the False Claims Act (FCA), noting that whistleblowers initiated more new FCA matters in 2012 than any prior year on record. See http://goo.gl/Oi8NQ. And despite making only one award in its first year of business, the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Office of the Whistleblower reported receiving 3,001 complaints. See SEC Annual Report on the Dodd Frank Whistleblower Program Fiscal Year 2012, November 2012.

The wave of federal legislation continues to provide significant financial incentives and protections to whistleblowers for reporting corporate misconduct to law enforcement. And the wave shows no signs of diminishing in 2013. On Jan. 2, 2013, the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was signed into law, with enhanced whistleblower protections for employees of contractors and subcontractors working for other federal agencies. Notably, President Obama, who has been lauded for the whistleblowing protections enacted under his administration and who as recently as November signed a new whistleblower protection law for federal employees, objected that the provisions might be read to interfere with his authority to manage and direct executive branch officials. See http://goo.gl/i1tkD0.

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