AG Nominee Barr Reverses Position on Key Whistleblower Law

He previously called the law, a key tool for fighting fraud, an ‘abomination’

Attorney general nominee William Barr reversed his position on the False Claims Act, a law used to fight fraud against the government that serves as a key tool for whistleblowers.

The law, which dates back to the Civil War, also allows citizens to file private claims on behalf of the government and share in any penalty collected. The Justice Department said late last year it had collected more than $2.8 billion in cases from False Claims Act actions during fiscal year 2018.

Mr. Barr has previously called the law an “abomination.” Whistleblower groups were alarmed about his views and sent a letter to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, saying Mr. Barr has “demonstrated a deeply antagonistic stance toward whistleblowers.”

Questioned Tuesday by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R, Iowa) during a confirmation hearing about his views of the law, Mr. Barr said he’d “diligently enforce the False Claims Act.” He also said, in response to Sen. Grassley’s questions, that he doesn’t consider the law to be an abomination. read more »

Sacklers Directed Efforts to Mislead Public About OxyContin, New Documents Indicate

A filing in a Massachusetts lawsuit contains dozens of internal Purdue Pharma documents suggesting the family was far more involved than the company has long contended.

Members of the Sackler family, which owns the company that makes OxyContin, directed years of efforts to mislead doctors and patients about the dangers of the powerful opioid painkiller, a court filing citing previously undisclosed documents contends.

When evidence of growing abuse of the drug became clear in the early 2000s, one of them, Richard Sackler, advised pushing blame onto people who had become addicted.

“We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible,” Mr. Sackler wrote in an email in 2001, when he was president of the company, Purdue Pharma. “They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.” read more »

Ex-Barclays trio 'cheated global financial system', Euribor trial told

Three former Barclays bankers cheated the global financial system to gain an unfair edge over counterparties in a five-year plot to rig Euribor interest rates, a London prosecutor alleged on Tuesday.

James Waddington, a lawyer for the UK Serious Fraud Office, said the defendants were part of an elite, well-paid group that fixed the odds in a zero-sum game as he opened the prosecution’s case in a criminal trial expected to last at least two months.

In London’s sixth rate-rigging trial, the three defendants are accused of conspiracy to defraud by dishonestly manipulating Euribor (the euro interbank offered rate), a Brussels-based benchmark that helps determine rates on more than $150 trillion of global financial contracts and loans, between 2005 and 2009. read more »

Expecting a Huge Payout, Investment Banker Loses His New Job Instead

Andrea Orcel is Europe’s most famous investment banker, a suave, brash and fabulously wealthy dealmaker who counts many of the Continent’s chief executives as his longtime clients.

Last fall, he agreed to become one of those C.E.O.s. He accepted a job running the day-to-day operations of Banco Santander, a sprawling European and American lender whose ruling Botín family is one of Mr. Orcel’s oldest patrons.

On Tuesday, that deal unraveled — doomed by an extraordinary public spat over who would pay Mr. Orcel the more than $50 million in deferred compensation he was owed by his previous employer, the Swiss bank UBS. It leaves Mr. Orcel without a job and leaves his once-high-flying career in limbo.

At a time when executive compensation is under growing scrutiny all over the world, Santander’s decision represents perhaps the highest-profile instance of a corporation rescinding a job offer because it was worried about the blowback from a rich payday. read more »