The Sec Awards $22 Million to a Company Insider Who Helped Uncover a Well-hidden Fraud

• Posted on: Sep 9 2016

On August 30, 2016, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that it awarded a company insider $22.5 million for providing “detailed” information about a “well-hidden fraud at the company where the whistleblower worked.” Though not disclosed by the SEC, news outlets reported that the company involved was Monsanto Co.

The $22.5 million award is the second-largest the SEC has awarded a whistleblower since the program’s inception in 2011. Among other things, the SEC recognized the “extensive assistance” provided by the whistleblower in “help[ing] the agency halt” the fraud.

According to the news media, the fraud concerned accounting improprieties involving a rebate program Monsanto used to sell Roundup, a popular weed killer. The SEC accused Monsanto of falsifying its earnings through a corporate rebate program that was designed to increase the product’s sales.

The SEC said that Monsanto “lacked sufficient internal controls to account for millions of dollars in rebates that it offered to retailers and distributors. It ultimately booked a sizeable amount of revenue, but then failed to recognize the costs of the rebate programs on its books.”

Monsanto neither admitted nor denied the charges.

The whistleblower’s attorney told news outlets that the whistleblower, a finance executive at Monsanto, went to the SEC only after first trying to correct the accounting issues internally.

Commenting on the award, Jane Norberg, Acting Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, said:

Company employees are in unique positions behind-the-scenes to unravel complex or deeply buried wrongdoing. Without this whistleblower’s courage, information, and assistance, it would have been extremely difficult for law enforcement to discover this securities fraud on its own.

Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a whistleblower who provides original information to the SEC that leads to a successful enforcement action resulting in over $1 million in monetary sanctions may be awarded an amount not less than 10% and not more than 30% of the monetary sanctions collected. Since 2011, the SEC has awarded more than $107 million to 33 whistleblowers who “provid[ed] the SEC with original and useful information that led to a successful enforcement action.” The largest amount awarded to a whistleblower by the SEC was $30 million in 2014.

Tagged with: Whistleblower Representation