The omnibus appropriations bill enacted last year, contains something called the Anti-Money Laundering Whistleblower Improvement Act. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin next guest on this podcast, calls it the most important transnational anti-corruption whistleblower law since the Dodd-Frank law in 2010. In fact, Stephen Kohn, a partner at the law firm Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto, helped get it passed.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin This whistleblower issue has been kind of your abiding life story, you might say. Tell us about the Anti-Money Laundering Whistleblower Improvement Act that was just enacted.
Stephen Kohn Sure. So the right of people outside the United States to blow the whistle, be anonymous and confidential and qualify for an awards has been growing since Dodd-Frank, because Dodd-Frank covered the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And it’s really been a sea change for fighting international corruption. So we saw this. We then saw very large money laundering cases. And in fact, I represented the whistleblower, in what they believed to be the largest money laundering case ever, which was 240 billion laundered from Russia and former Soviet republics into Western banks over a 10 or 15 year period. And it’s just a disgraceful situation. So we pushed and we advocated for a whistleblower law to cover money laundering. While you would need anonymity and confidentiality, which the law has. But the key was monetary rewards, because if you’re in Russia or you’re in Denmark...
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