DAMBISA MOYO
IN SEPTEMBER 2021, THE United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) handed an anonymous whistleblower US$110 million.
It was the second-highest single award to an informant whose actions have led to a successful prosecution since the SEC launched its whistleblowing programme in 2012.
In one of the programme's earliest cases, Sherry Hunt received a US$31 million payout in 2012 as a settlement for revealing that her employer, Citigroup, was buying mortgages from outside lenders with doctored tax forms, phony appraisals, and missing signatures.
Later that year, the Internal Revenue Service awarded an even higher payout – US$104 million – to Bradley Burkenfeld for exposing many secrets of the Swiss banking system. All in all, since 2012, the SEC has awarded more than US$1 billion to more than 200 informants.
Each of them have received a payment of between 10% and 30% of all fines collected in cases where penalties are more than US$1 million.
The SEC's programme therefore has been instrumental in encouraging whistleblowers to come forward and report illicit, illegal, and corrupt behaviour in the private sector, and many see whistleblowers as a crucial line of defence against bad actors.
In a recent high-profile whistleblower case, Frances Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook, filed a complaint with the SEC that, while not pointing to a clear-cut case of illegality, raises questions about the social obligations of Big Tech companies.
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