In a new article for Law360, leading whistleblower attorney Stephen M. Kohn calls for Congress to pass the bipartisan CFTC Whistleblower Fund Improvement Act of 2023. The bill addresses a funding crisis threatening to undermine the whistleblower program of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
In the article, Kohn, a founding partner of Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto outlines the establishment of the CFTC Whistleblower Program and its immense growth over the past decade. The program, which offers monetary awards and anti-retaliation protections to whistleblowers, has allowed the CFTC to recover over $3 billion from fraudsters. It has correspondingly awarded over $330 million to qualified whistleblowers.
“On a tiny budget, the CFTC has created a world-class whistleblower program, which has greatly bolstered the agency’s enforcement efforts as it extends into emergent areas of fraud,” Kohn states.
In July, in honor of National Whistleblower Day, Acting Director of the CFTC’s Whistleblower Office Christina McGlosson told WNN: “The Commodity Futures Trading Commission recognizes the critical role whistleblowers play in our enforcement program every day.”
The CFTC Whistleblower Program is in danger of being a victim of its own success, however. When it established the program, Congress placed a $100 million cap on the fund used to finance the program and pay out whistleblower awards. This fund is entirely financed by sanctions collected through the program, but any...
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