Whistleblower: squeal worth – Handelsblatt

Monsanto

A former employee had uncovered fraud in the seed company

(Photo: Reuters)

New York If you turn up grievances in their own company, makes itself so often by his colleagues and especially the superiors disliked. That’s one of the reasons that authorities often difficult to do with the investigation of wrongdoing.

In 2011, the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has therefore launched a program, can get high rewards for the whistleblower. This is possible also anonymous to protect employees against retaliation. The are prohibited but nevertheless come again and again.

In this project the SEC has now paid a former employee of the seed company Monsanto for uncovering maladministration $ 22 million. It was the second highest reward of the SEC so far – the highest was in 2014 at 30 million. So far a total of 107 million dollars were paid to 33 informants. but the best paid whistleblower remains of former banker Bradley Birkenfeld. He got from the IRS in 2012 about 104 million dollars for his services: Birkenfeld had exposed how the Swiss bank UBS rich Americans had helped in tax evasion.

The seed company Monsanto

• US company Monsanto is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of – often genetically modified – seeds and herbicides.

• the company is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, is one of the 500 largest publicly traded in the US and most recently put around 15 billion US dollars (about 13 billion euros). Here Monsanto posted a surplus of 2.3 billion dollars.

• Worldwide, the company claims to nearly 21,200 people, almost half of them in the US. The seed has operations in 66 countries – including Germany.

• Monsanto called sustainable agriculture as a “core concern”, but most vigorously by environmental organizations among others for the production of genetically modified seeds criticized

  source:. dpa

In the announced would case had the former Monsanto managers, the authorities pointed out that Monsanto had lied about the cost of a discount program for the weedkiller Roundup, informed the SEC. Because of manipulation were not in the income information of the Group for 2009 by 2011.

Since inception of the program, the SEC has received 14,000 tips from all US states and 95 other countries – and rising. Some 500 million dollars to fines, the securities regulatory characterized taken what she had referred 346 million to damaged investors.

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Employees often turn first to their bosses if they detect irregularities. However, this can cause exposed to reprisals if the respective managers do not share their view. Attorney Jordan Thomas of the Registry Labatan Sucharow in New York therefore advises caution: it is often better to anonymously contact the authorities.

Working Contractual arrangements vs. SEC regulations

Thomas’ opinion, contradict some contractual arrangements, such as in the banking giant Wells Fargo, the provisions of the SEC. the rules allegedly are tantamount, employees complicate accepting rewards of supervision

A former employee of Wells Fargo claims to have been fired in 2014 because he had uncovered maladministration in the real estate lending. The bank denies this. A former employee of Deutsche Bank has waived recently to his reward. He wants to draw attention to the fact that for the maladministration responsible – in the case concerned, it is a problematic accounting of derivatives -. Have not received any penalties

The rewards for whistleblowers be between ten and 30 percent of punitive sums cashed the SEC, provided they exceed the amount of one million dollars. The distributions will be financed from its own funds, which is filled with fines for violations of securities laws.