Whistleblower News From The Inside -- April 23, 2018

By the C|C Whistleblower Lawyer Team

EU Moves to Protect Whistleblowers – Whistleblowers exposing fraud, tax evasion, data breaches and other misdeeds will be given more protection from retaliation under new rules proposed by the European Commission on Monday. The move by the EU executive comes in the wake of criticism from transparency campaigners about the lack of protection granted to individuals who report such breaches in EU laws. They cite the example of two former accounting firm employees who were prosecuted in 2016 for leaking data about Luxembourg’s tax deals with large corporations. The conviction of one was overturned by Luxembourg’s highest court this year. Critics also point to British regulators’ relatively lenient treatment of Barclays’ chief Executive Jes Staley last week who was allowed to keep his job after trying to uncover an informant at the bank. [nL8N1RX535] The European Commission said its proposal was a game changer since it will require companies setting up internal channels for whistleblowers and also shield them from reprisals such as sackings, demotion and even litigation. Reuters

 Barclays CEO Jes Staley Is Fined but Keeps Job After Whistleblower Probe – Barclays said Chief Executive Jes Staley will keep his job after British regulators concluded his attempts to unmask a whistleblower didn’t represent a “lack of integrity” and instead chose to slap the executive with a fine. The London-based bank said it still backed Mr. Staley, ending a year of instability for the CEO and drawing a line under a major unknown that has weighed on Barclays as it looks to push on from a major restructuring. The case was also the first major test of the new U.K. “Senior Managers Regime,” a set of regulatory rules aimed at ensuring bank executives are held responsible for their actions. The U.K. recently bolstered rules to protect whistleblowers. WSJ

The Unemployable Whistleblower –  Imagine calling out your employer for committing fraud not once, not twice, but three times. That was reality for Cecilia Guardiola, a registered nurse who worked in clinical documentation and case management for three health systems. When she couldn’t fix the problems in-house, she filed whistleblower suits under the False Claims Act against each health system, which I detailed in my story Three-Time Whistleblower Sends Warning to Providers. Guardiola walked away from three settlements with millions, but now she cannot get hired in the health-care field according to her attorney, Mitch Kreindler. That’s a high price to pay for doing the right thing. Some have said to me “don’t feel bad for her, she’s getting millions.” But I find that to be a cynical point of view because it assumes she had bad intentions. Kreindler told me his client gave up her dream job. That doesn’t sound like someone out to stick it to her employers. Bloomberg BNA Health Care Blog