TheCorporateCounsel.net

The FTC & SEC long ago bought into the concept of – with apologies to Snow White – “Whistleblowing While You Work” and implemented programs providing significant financial incentives for employees to blow the whistle on misconduct by their employers. Now the DOJ has joined the corporate whistleblower party.  Here’s an excerpt from this Dentons memo:

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has announced a new Department of Justice (“DOJ”) program that will provide corporate whistleblowers with financial rewards. The pilot program, to be implemented later this year on a yet-to-be-announced date, will be designed to further incentivize the immediate report of corporate misconduct to the DOJ by providing whistleblowers with a portion of forfeitures resulting from their complaints. The pilot program is another step by the DOJ to encourage companies to invest in a culture of compliance and to report misconduct as soon as it is brought to the company’s attention.

One year ago, the Deputy Attorney General announced a focus on building robust Voluntary Self-Disclosure (“VSD”) programs designed to encourage corporations to immediately report misconduct, and has now turned to incentivizing individuals to come forward through the new pilot program. The DOJ has “recognized there’s another way we can encourage individuals to report misconduct: by rewarding whistleblowers. And how do we do that? Money,” said Monaco in a speech on Thursday.

The memo notes that unlike the SEC’s whistleblower program, the DOJ’s applies to non-public companies and extends beyond misconduct implicating the federal securities laws. The policy amps up the incentives for employees of private companies to report misconduct to the government and may help explain why those seven little guys seem so darn happy about going off to work in the morning.

– John Jenkins