U.S. SEC chair says agency will not impose 'caps' on whistleblower awards

YAHOO FINANCE

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will not introduce "caps" on awards to whistleblowers who come forward with key information on fraud and other violations, the head of the agency told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Last year, the country's top markets regulator proposed reworking a program that allows the SEC to reward tipsters whose original information leads to a penalty exceeding $1 million with between 10% and 30% of the fine.

Reuters reported last month that SEC Chair Jay Clayton was rethinking some of the changes, which would give the SEC discretion to reduce certain payouts, following a backlash from whistleblower advocates who said the changes would deter insiders from coming forward. read more »

McKinsey Was Paid Millions to Reduce Violence at Rikers. So It Reportedly Gamed the Numbers to Look Like It Did.

SLATE

McKinsey & Company gamed the numbers in its report to New York City officials on its efforts to reduce violence in the infamous Rikers Island jail complex, according to a new report by ProPublica. In 2014, in the wake of a spike in reports of violence at the complex, the McKinsey was tasked with finding ways to reduce brawls and gang violence, as well as assaults by guards. The mission was a first for the corporate consulting firm that was in hot pursuit of increasingly lucrative public sector consulting contracts and it set out trialing new anti-violence approaches in what the firm referred to as the “Restart” housing units at Rikers. In an April 2017, partners at McKinsey trumpeted their success in what had ballooned into a $27.5 million project, announcing that violence had dropped by more than half in the units.

The results, however, turned out to be too good to be true. read more »

DOJ Investigating Makers of X-Lite Highway Guardrail

NBC7

The company that developed and marketed a guardrail blamed for deaths on the nation’s highways confirms it’s the target of a Justice Department inquiry.

The X-Lite guardrail was the focus of an NBC 7 Investigates series on highway safety equipment that allegedly caused fatal injuries to the occupants of vehicles that hit those guardrails.

Lindsay Transportation revealed the probe relates to possible problems with the X-Lite guardrail and potential violations of the False Claims Act.

Both the company and the federal agencies declined to provide more information about the probes, but the False Claims Act is used by “whistleblowers” inside a company to report alleged financial or unethical corporate behavior. read more »

American Trash

THE VERGE

Electronics can be hazardous when disposed of improperly, and the Basel Action Network, or BAN, investigates the underground world of the e-waste trade. The nonprofit group secretly embeds trackers in discarded devices, then hands them to recyclers to see where they end up, exposing bad practices in the process. After dropping bugged LCD monitors in Oregon, they followed along as the trackers traced a circuitous route through the summer of 2015 and into the fall. read more »