Archive

In Their Own Words — Win

-- They would say, “There's a gun in the boss's car and we're going to come and shoot you, and no one will know.”

Whistleblower Tin Nyo Win describing the threats used to force workers in Thailand to peel and clean shrimp for hours on end.  You can read more about his story and many others like him here.

European Parliament Resolution Provides Hope For The Possibility Of Financial Rewards For European Whistleblowers

By Richard Pike and Yulia Tosheva On 25 November 2015, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on tax rulings which calls on the European Commission to propose, by June 2016, an EU legislative framework for the effective protection of whistleblowers. The European Parliament: Stresses that it is not acceptable that citizens and journalists can be subject to prosecution rather than legal protection when...

DOJ Scores Big With Record-Breaking Alstom FCPA Sentence -- Who's Next On The DOJ'S FCPA Hit List?

By Eric Havian and Gordon Schnell  (Published in Offshore Alert) Late Friday, French power and transportation company Alstom S.A. was sentenced to pay a $772 million fine for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) through its payment of millions of dollars in secret bribes to government officials across the globe.  This follows the company's December 2014 guilty plea to the charges.  The 9-figure...

A Step in the Right Direction for UK Whistleblowers: Financial Services Regulator Requires Whistleblowing Arrangements Be Beefed Up

By Richard Pike As we announced earlier this week, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has imposed new rules to promote whistleblowing. This post discusses the new requirements and identifies some shortcomings. Readers outside the UK will need some background to put the new rules in context. The existing whistleblower regime in the UK does not go down the US route of providing financial rewards for...

SEC Enforcement Spotlight – Bristol-Myers Squibb pays over $14 million to settle FCPA charges

New York-based pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) will pay more than $14 million to settle SEC findings that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).  According to the SEC’s order instituting settled administrative proceedings, between  2009 and 2014, sales representatives of BMS China sales sought to secure and increase business by providing health care providers in China with...

Should Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) Be Doing More to Counter Fraud?

By Richard Pike and Yulia Tosheva As mentioned in one of our Whistleblower Insider daily updates, the accountants PKF Littlejohn got a lot of press coverage in the UK this week for a report suggesting that the NHS may be losing as much as £5.74 billion per year to fraud. Such a big number obviously provokes a reaction but what can we really conclude about fraud in the NHS and the measures taken to address...

SEC Enforcement Spotlight – Mead Johnson Nutrition

Mead Johnson Nutrition Company agreed to pay $12 million to settle SEC findings that it violated the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act (“FCPA”).  An SEC investigation found that employees of Mead Johnson’s Chinese subsidiary made improper payments to healthcare professionals at government-owned hospitals to induce them to recommend Mead Johnson’s infant formula to new or expectant mothers.  See SEC Press...

In Their Own Words -- Tillipman

-- “Let’s be clear about one thing: Chuck Blazer is not a whistleblower. And more importantly, the media’s haphazard use of this term to describe Blazer is a disservice to the brave individuals that may legitimately be deemed ‘whistleblowers.’"

-- Jessica Tillipman, Senior Editor of the FCPA Blog and Assistant Dean at The George Washington University Law School.  Click here for more.  

Nine Top FIFA Officials Indicted as DOJ Promises More on the Way

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team FIFA has long been rumored to be rife with corruption.  Late last year, former FIFA employee turned whistleblower Phaedra Almajid blew the whistle on bribery in the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process. And just this week, after a four-year FBI investigation, the DOJ  indicted nine FIFA officials and five marketing executives on racketeering, conspiracy, and corruption...

International Olympic Committee Launches Whistleblower Hotline

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team The International Olympic Committee ("IOC") this week launched its new Integrity and Compliance Hotline for whistleblowers to report competition manipulation and other ethical issues that threaten the integrity of sport.  Through the hotline, the IOC is looking to protect "clean athletes" by ferreting out any financial misconduct, such as match-fixing, and other legal,...