It is the largest award ever made to a whistleblower on record under any of the ever-expanding list of whistleblower rewards programs. $279 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “to a whistleblower whose information and assistance led to the successful enforcement of SEC and related actions.” That is pretty much all the SEC disclosed in announcing the award because of the agency’s strong commitment to maintaining the confidentiality of its informants. The identity of this record-setting whistleblower remains a mystery.
But thanks to some special sleuthing by the Wall Street Journal, we now know the blockbuster award stems from the more than $1 billion Swedish telecom giant Ericsson paid in December 2019 to settle SEC and Department of Justice (DOJ) charges of foreign bribery. According to the government, Ericsson violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through illicit payments — concealed through sham contracts and false invoices — to officials in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Kuwait to secure business in those countries.
Under the SEC Whistleblower Program, whistleblowers who report violations of the securities laws that lead to successful enforcement actions may receive between 10 and 30 percent of any SEC recovery. As was the case here, they also may be entitled to a share of related recoveries from other agencies resulting from the information the whistleblower reports to the SEC. Given the SEC’s strong protections of its whistleblowers,...
Police have launched an investigation into alleged false accusation by Park Cheol-min, a former member of the Seongnam International Mafia. Park, ahead of the 2022 presidential election, raised al...