The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants is releasing a new standards book this week designed to elicit early detection of corporate wrongdoing and early correctional action. Accountants are frequently confounded as to what to do about corporate fraud as they also have a duty of confidentiality. There is an apparent need for the...
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Category: Whistleblower Laws
Trump’s budget plans would likely increase whistleblower programs
According to statements from Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, he will not make cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Spending on those three programs (nearly $1.9 trillion in the past year) accounts for more than half of all government spending ($3.7 trillion) and is a big driver of growth in the long-term debt
While Medicare...
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Cybersecurity whistleblowers file under SEC whistleblower program
The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently evaluating cybersecurity whistleblower claims. As an example, based on a tip from a cybersecurity whistleblower, the Department of Health and Human Services recently brought charges against a hospital for improperly storing electronic protected health information.
An "eligible whistleblower" under the SEC's Whistleblower Incentive Program is a...
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Senate passes motor vehicle safety whistleblower law
The U.S. Senate approved and sent to the House of Representatives the Thune-Nelson Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act which offers individuals a substantial monetary incentive for whistleblowers in the automotive industry to report safety problems and vehicle defects that could lead to serious injuries or death. Whistleblowers could receive up to 30...
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New Yorks new tax whistleblower law strengthens state coffers soon other states will follow
New York State's whistleblower law is the first in the nation to include a provision allowing whistleblowers to collect a reward for helping the state to recover moneys from tax evading companies and people.
The law works like this: a citizen can bring a lawsuit against a person or business that makes more than $1...
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Hedge fund whistleblowers can report secretly and still keep their jobs
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission awarded a confidential whistleblower the highest sum to date for reporting on a fraudulent hedge fund that had bilked moneys from hundreds of investors. The amount received by the whistleblower was $14 million.
While the name of the whistleblower was not revealed and no information about the financial...
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Gifts to physicians to be disclosed under new federal law
Under a new federal law called the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, gifts more than $10 to physicians from drug and medical device companies will require disclosure. The legislation resulted from a long string of scandals about secret drug and device company payments to doctors and resulting law suits and investigations. Speculation is that it...
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MICHAEL DOUGLAS FBI PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT MEANS LOSS OF REWARDS
Michael Douglas, who played financial villain Gordon Gekko in the film WALL STREET now appears in FBI public service announcements released this week targeting financial fraud. If people follow his advice however, they will miss out on cas rewards that the government pays under new financial whistleblower laws. Under the SEC's whistleblower program, tipsters...
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STATISTICS EVERY WHISTLEBLOWER SHOULD KNOW
You hear about the large settlements in whistleblower cases each year and sometimes the numbers are staggering. In the largest cases whistleblowers can receive over $100 million. Some cases against the pharmaceutical industry have been really really big: hundreds of millions of dollars paid to resolve allegations of fraud in pricing drugs, in paying...
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OSHA ISSUES UPDATED WHISTLEBLOWER MANUAL
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has released a new edition of its Whistleblower Investigations Manual. The manual contains updates to case handling procedures, information on the new laws and other information to guide OSHA's Whistleblower Protection Program, which addresses retaliation complaints under the 21 whistleblower statutes delegated to The updated manual is...
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