On September 1, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced that Wells Fargo violated the whistleblower protection provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by improperly terminating a Chicago area-based senior manager in the company’s commercial banking segment. The agency ordered the San Francisco-based bank to pay the employee more than $22 million to cover back wages, front pay, interest, lost benefits and bonuses, and compensatory damages.
“The evidence demonstrates Wells Fargo took retaliatory action against this senior manager for repeatedly expressing concerns about financial management they believed violated federal laws,” Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Doug Parker said in an agency statement.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 first established OSHA’s whistleblower
protection authority. The agency is now responsible for investigating whistleblower complaints under more than 20 federal statutes, including Sarbanes-Oxley.
OSHA’s Chicago regional office initiated an investigation after receiving a complaint from the employee. Wells Fargo violated the whistleblower protection provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, according to OSHA, when the bank terminated a senior manager who had repeatedly voiced concerns to area managers and the corporate ethics line regarding conduct the manager believed violated relevant financial laws, including wire fraud.
The manager expressed concerns that they were directed to...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...