Not Wanting to Be Left Behind, the UK Introduces Two Bills in Parliament Seeking to Improve UK’s Whistleblower Protections
Posted 07/2/21
The European Union is on the cusp of taking a quantum leap in the protection of whistleblowers. Whereas previously only 8 of the 27 member states had national laws protecting whistleblowers, the new EU Whistleblowing Directive (Directive 2019/1937) requires that all 27 member states transpose into national law sweeping whistleblower protections by the end of this year, creating a blanket of whistleblower protections...
Can the False Claims Act Protect Immigration Detainees from Forced Labor?
Posted 07/2/21
By William Greenlaw
A recent human rights case raises a novel question of False Claims Act applicability: when private immigration detention facilities defraud the government by forcing individuals into labor. The federal government has a vast regulatory and statutory scheme meant to stop federal contractors from using trafficked labor. But forced labor in detention facilities has historically been overlooked....
This Week in Whistleblower History: 50th Anniversary of the Publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” Leaked by Daniel Ellsberg
Posted 06/17/21
This week marks the 50th Anniversary of the publication by The New York Times, starting on June 13, 1971, of a series of reports on the secret history of the Vietnam War based on thousands of pages of highly classified government documents. The documents, which became known as the “Pentagon Papers,” were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former U.S. Marine with a Ph.D. in Economics working as a military analyst for...
Auto-safety regulators finally take steps to stand up nation’s only safety-focused whistleblower program, but challenges lie ahead
Posted 06/16/21
Back in 2015, the public seethed over the auto industry’s historic failures. Takata’s air-bag scandal, Toyota’s unintended-acceleration deceptions, and General Motors’s deadly ignition-switch cover-up were in the headlines. Hundreds died and millions were exposed to grave dangers because of the industry’s propensity to bury known safety defects.
In 2015, Congress tried to turn the tide, passing the
Whistleblowers Without Borders: International Whistleblowers are Increasingly Important Contributors of Tips to the SEC Whistleblower Reward Program
Posted 06/11/21
On March 4, 2021, the SEC announced an award of over $5 million to joint foreign whistleblowers whose tip, providing significant information about misconduct abroad, caused the opening of an investigation that resulted in a successful SEC enforcement action.
According to Jane Norberg, former Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, “The whistleblowers’ information alerted the staff to misconduct...
Whistleblowing is crossing paths with antitrust enforcement. Expect the trend to accelerate.
In the past few years, whistleblowers have become increasingly instrumental in detecting and addressing corporate wrongdoing. Increased protections and financial incentives have encouraged whistleblowers to expose corruption and other wrongdoing, much of which would otherwise often go unnoticed.This phenomenon is also...
Last October, Purdue Pharma, the inventor, manufacturer, and marketer of Oxycontin, the drug at the center of the opioid crisis, reached a massive healthcare fraud settlement with the Department of Justice. The Department advertised the settlement as an $8.3 billion dollar recovery, which would make it one of the largest healthcare fraud settlements in history. In his book Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe explores...
Catch of the Week: Dental Clinics to Pay $2.7M for Using Unsterilized Tools on Medicaid Patients
Posted 05/28/21
For over five years, Upper Allegheny Health Systems, a health care system operating several dental clinics in New York and Pennsylvania, allegedly performed dental services without sterilizing equipment between patients and falsely billed Medicaid for those services. After a former employee blew the whistle, the United States and the State of New York stepped in to investigate, and the defendant agreed to a $2.7...
DOJ Lowers The Boom On COVID-19 Healthcare Scams, Again
Posted 05/28/21
Hey, fraudsters, did you hear? There was a global pandemic, so the government pumped trillions of dollars into the economy. Probably a good time to get a piece of the cut, you ask? They’ll never find out, right? So many ways to grift!
Well, not so much. From the start, the cops on the beat, led by the United States Department of Justice, have screamed from the rooftops: “Don’t do it. We WILL...
Listen to Mary Inman on BBC’s Business Daily Program “What Happens to Whistleblowers?”
Posted 05/21/21
Constantine Cannon’s own Mary Inman appeared on an episode of the Business Daily program from the BBC World Service, What Happens to Whistleblowers: How Exposing the Truth at Work Can Cost You Your Career. Listen at the Spotify link below, or on your preferred podcast platform.
Mary was joined by whistleblowers Ian Foxley and Bianca Goodson and whistleblower psychotherapist David H. Martin for a discussion...