Investment news website ValueWalk highlights some recommendations Phillips & Cohen partner Erika Kelton made at Fraud Fest, the Berkeley Center for Law and Business’s annual symposium, about ways to improve the SEC whistleblower program.
The moderator of the panel on whistleblowers asked attorney Erika Kelton about the impact the Dodd-Frank Act has had on whistleblowing. She said the act essentially released pent-up demand. She said they started seeing inquiries about it the day the act became law, and things haven’t let up since then.
Kelton added that the Securities and Exchange’s whistleblower office got over 5,000 submissions last year. This year, it’s on track to exceed that. Between March and May, the office received over 4,000 submissions.
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She also feels that the Dodd-Frank Act doesn’t go far enough in creating partnerships between the whistleblower team and the development team. She said the Dodd-Frank Act also created a companion program, the CFTC whistleblower program.
Kelton explained that other programs establish more cooperation between the whistleblower and the government. She mentioned the False Claims Act and how it works effectively to have a public/ private partnership between the government and private counsel, enhancing the resources of the government.
“I think that the Dodd Frank programs would do well, even better if they had that kind of mechanism, perhaps on a selective basis,” she said. “I also think that there are improvements that can be made and a lot has been observed about this regarding the pace of awards.”
Read the entire article, “How Dodd-Frank changed whistleblowing forever,” on ValueWalk’s website.