Plans to reward people who report corporate crime within their own organisation are to be taken forward by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over the next year, writes Tom Stocker.
In its latest annual business plan the SFO lists “progress whistleblower incentivisation reform” as one of the SFO’s planned outputs for the year 2025-26. That output is linked to a stated desired outcome of combatting crime effectively through intelligence, enforcement and prevention.
In the UK, whistleblowers are protected under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. The legislation ensures that individuals who disclose information about wrongdoing in the workplace are safeguarded from retaliation.
However, critics argue that the existing laws do not go far enough to protect whistleblowers and that more needs to be done to encourage individuals to come forward with information about wrongdoing. The introduction of a corporate whistleblower rewards pilot programme in the US last year has prompted renewed calls for reform in the UK.
Whistleblower financial incentives are a feature of US white collar and corporate criminal enforcement, but it would represent a significant policy shift in the UK where there is a reticence about the reliability of incentivised reports, and concern that it risks incentivising mischief-making and false reports as well as genuine reports.
The SFO knows that any proposal to incentivise whistleblowers will be controversial and I would anticipate it will take a...
From misinformation surrounding the tragic Tejas fighter jet crash at the Dubai Airshow, which claimed the life of the pilot, to a manipulated video falsely showing Indian Army Chief General Upend...