Leaking information to the media about bad financial controls is not protected by SOX whistleblower retaliation clause. Nicholas P. Tides and Matthew C. Neumann were working as “Audit IT SOX auditors” at The Boeing Company. They made several complaints about auditing deficiencies to their supervisors. They claimed “that Boeing’s auditing culture was unethical and that [...]
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In-House Counsel as Whistleblowers under SOX
Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (18 USC §1514A) expressly authorizes any “person” alleging discrimination based on protected conduct to file a complaint with the Secretary of Labor and, thereafter, to bring suit in an appropriate district court. There is no exception for lawyers or in-house counsel. Recently, the Ninth Circuit tackled this issue in [...]
Whistleblowing in Europe – Legal Aspects
Jonathan Armstrong of Eversheds gave this webinar. (You can watch it yourself after a free registration: Whistelblowing: Challenges in running a helpline in Europe) These are my notes: Why have a hotline? A hotline can help the headquarters connect with offices abroad. They can help internalize issues and the flow of information. The main reason [...]
It’s Not Fraud, But it Can’t be Ignored
This session was a “dark session” so I am not sharing my notes, but will share a few themes that emerged. Most hotline complaints are for incidents that are not true compliance or ethics issues. Most studies show that HR issues tend to be almost half of the complaints. There were two camps of thoughts. [...]
Hotline for Improvements
I overheard at a recent compliance meeting about the possibility of using the whistleblower hotline to also solicit comments for improvements to the operations of your company. Those of you with active hotlines you probably get enough false positives coming through (HR, workplace disputes, …) that you probably don’t want anything else coming in. But [...]
Whistleblower Programs: Challenges for Multinational Companies
Katherine D. Ashley, Gary DiBianco, Dana H. Freyer, Matthias Horbach, Pierre Servan-Schreiber of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP put together a nice article addressing the challenges of exporting the whistleblower requirements under Section 301 of Sarbanes-Oxley to operations in the European Union: Whistleblower Programs: Challenges for Multinational Companies. Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley [...]
FINRA Announces Creation of “Office of the Whistleblower”
FINRA announced that they have created a new Office of the Whisteblower to expedite review of high-risk tips. FINRA Senior Vice President Cameron Funkhouser will oversee this new office. What’s not clear to me is how this new initiative differs from the existing File a Regulatory Tip procedure. According to the press release, this new [...]
Decision on Whistleblower Provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley
A federal court held that a former employee seeking on acted in good faith, but under an objective analysis, his belief that the company was engaged in fraud was not reasonable and upheld termination. Day v. Staples, Inc., 2009 WL 294804 (1st Cir. February 9, 2009) The employee complained that the company improperly handled regularly [...]
Encouraging Courage on the Job
G. Jeffrey MacDonald takes a look at whistleblower policies in business for the Christian Science Monitor:When courage is encouraged on the job: How workplaces can motivate employees to take a stand when trouble brews. In business, the difference between a fixable mistake and an irreparable disaster sometimes hinges on whether employees dare to take a [...]
Best Practice Advice for Improving Employee Awareness of Your GRC Program
This post gathers my notes from a webinar entitled Best Practice Advice for Improving Employee Awareness of Your GRC Program which was presented by EthicsPoint. Barbara Upton-Garvin from the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Kansas City started off with a discussion of their awareness programs. They highlighted their ethics policies and their whistleblower’s policy. [...]
