The U.S. Justice Department is expanding its whistleblower program to coax more tipsters to disclose corporate misconduct by offering monetary rewards, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said on yesterday. The Justice Department is already authorized to dole out awards for information that leads to forfeitures of assets, but the agency has used it sparingly. The plan now is to launch a Justice Department-run whistleblower rewards program later this year, Monaco said. "The premise is simple: if an individual helps the Justice Department discover significant corporate or financial misconduct — otherwise unknown to us — then the individual could qualify to receive a portion of the resulting forfeiture," Monaco said. The department is particularly interested in information on criminal abuse of the U.S. financial system, as well as foreign and domestic corruption cases, especially involving illegal corporate payments to government officials. Other agencies have whistleblower programs. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, both civil regulators, launched initiatives in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that they have touted as remarkably successful. But those programs are limited in scope by the agencies' jurisdictions, and the Justice Department is seeking to fill in the gaps, Monaco said. The Justice Department has launched a series of policy changes under President Joe Biden, aimed at charging more executives involved in misconduct and holding repeat corporate offenders accountable.
