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• Carson Block of Muddy Waters received a $14 million award from the SEC, court papers reveal.
• Kevin Barnes said he and Block had a research partnership, but Block won't cut him in on the award.
• The SEC has awarded more than $1 billion to whistleblowers, most of them anonymous.

Famed short-seller Carson Block scored a $14 million windfall earlier this year for sharing one of his reports on corporate misconduct with regulators, a new lawsuit claims.

Block, whose Muddy Waters Research made a name by shorting opaque Chinese companies, won the payment in March as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission's whistleblower program, which cuts checks to tipsters who help expose financial misconduct.

The details of SEC whistleblower payments are usually kept under wraps, as the agency redacts the names of the whistleblowers it pays. But details of Block's payment were revealed in a Monday court filing by a short seller named Kevin Barnes, who claims that he had a research partnership with Block and was frozen out of the award. Barnes wants $7 million.

Whistleblower lawyers say the SEC often approaches short-seller whistleblower claims skeptically.

"The SEC has been very receptive to all of this, but is obviously and appropriately cautious about not moving the market," said Michael Ronickher, an attorney at Constantine Cannon who represents whistleblowers. "It would really...

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