DOJ Announces New Bounty Program for Whistleblowers
Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Monaco announced a plan to develop and implement a DOJ whistleblower reward program. According to Monaco, DOJ intends to offer financial rewards to individuals who bring actionable information about corporate misconduct to DOJ. These incentive payments will be offered:
- “Only after all victims have been properly compensated;
- Only to those who submit truthful information not already known to the government;
- Only to those not involved in the criminal activity itself;
- And only in cases where there isn’t an existing financial disclosure incentive — including qui tam or another federal whistleblower program.”
Monaco describes the purpose of this program as follows: “It will create new incentives for individuals to report misconduct to the Department. And it will drive companies to invest further in their own internal compliance and reporting systems.”
Now’s the time to expand our use of this tool in corporate misconduct cases and apply it to reward whistleblowing.
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So we’re planning something new: a DOJ-run whistleblower rewards program. Today, we’re launching a 90-day sprint to develop and implement a pilot program, with a formal start date later this year.
The premise is simple: if an individual helps DOJ discover significant corporate or financial misconduct — otherwise unknown to us — then the individual could qualify to receive a portion of the resulting forfeiture.
