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On November 15, 2021, the SEC printed its annual report to Congress protecting the interval from October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021. The report was ready by the SEC’s Workplace of the Whistleblower to summarize its whistleblower bounty program, report on this system’s latest dramatic progress, and spotlight key amendments to the SEC’s whistleblower program guidelines.
Document-Breaking Awards for Whistleblower Bounty Program
The report reveals that in FY 2021, the whistleblower program skilled the most important variety of submissions to this system and the most important variety of award recipients. The SEC paid out extra in whistleblower awards this fiscal 12 months than in all earlier years mixed.
The SEC obtained greater than 12,200 whistleblower ideas; a rise of 76% from FY 2020. The information have been obtained from 99 totally different international locations and all 50 states. The commonest violations reported included: Manipulation (25%), Company Disclosures and Financials (16%), Providing Fraud (16%), Buying and selling and Pricing (6%), and Preliminary Coin Choices and Cryptocurrencies (6%).
Total, the SEC awarded roughly $564 million to 108 people in FY 2021, together with the 2 largest single award payouts thus far—$114 million in October 2020 and $110 million in September 2021—which introduced the entire quantity the SEC has awarded to whistleblowers because the program’s inception to $1.1 billion.
Amendments to Whistleblower Program Guidelines
The SEC adopted a number of modifications to its whistleblower program efficient as of December 2020, together with to its award-setting procedures and to the definition of a “whistleblower” (see our submit on these modifications here). In response to the report, these amendments “elevated efficiencies across the evaluate and processing of whistleblower award claims.”
Underneath the brand new guidelines, the SEC issued two everlasting bar orders in opposition to serial submitters who have been answerable for a whole lot of frivolous award purposes.
The report additionally famous that in August 2020, the brand new SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, directed workers to think about revisions to 2 amendments that would have discouraged ideas by permitting the SEC to restrict the scale of among the largest awards and to unilaterally deny “associated motion” awards the place there may be one other relevant whistleblower award program.
© 2021 Proskauer Rose LLP. Nationwide Legislation Overview, Quantity XI, Quantity 335
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