Securities and Exchange Commission Whistleblowers
Colorado Securities and Exchange Commission Whistleblower Attorneys
The recent financial reform legislation ("Dodd-Frank Act") establishes a whistleblower program that authorizes substantial cash rewards to whistleblowers whose reporting of violations of securities laws results in successful prosecution or settlement by the SEC. Under this Act, the SEC will pay whistleblowers rewards of between 10 percent and 30 percent of monetary sanctions in excess of one million dollars that the government obtains as a result of the whistleblowers' assistance.
An important distinction between this law and the FCA is that the SEC whistleblower provisions permit a percentage of criminal fines or sanctions to be rewarded to the insider, not just a portion of the civil recovery as in the FCA. Given the size of recent monetary sanctions against SEC violators, the new law may result in very substantial remuneration to the SEC whistleblowers.
In addition, the law provides whistleblowers protection from employer retaliation, similar to employment retaliation protections provided by the FCA.
