Characteristics And Impact Of Whistleblowers

Big Bank’s president also threatens legal action. What potential causes of action could you foresee him bringing in court? Would he be successful? Why or why not? What arguments could Systems Inc. raise in its defense? What are Big Bank’s potential damages?

Review “Just pucker and blow: An analysis of corporate whistleblowers” in Chapter 2. Please respond to the following:

According to Harvard Law School’s article, approximately two-thirds of companies in the U.S. are affected by fraud. However, whistleblower Hotline can be as defense against management overrides. The article noted that whistleblower could be more effective if it become as apart of the corporate compliance programs and a reward of any monetary sanctions collected to motivate the employees Also, the article mention that the employees

The Dodd- Frank law on whistle-blowing bounty program is an upgrade from the Sarbanes- Oxley. The Sarbanes – Oxley whistle -blower program protected employees from getting retaliated upon by their employers when they report misconduct within the company they are employed. Dodd- Frank law took is a step further, an employee who reports financial misconduct are entitled to receive 10 percent to 30 percent of the fines and settlements if the conviction is upheld and the penalties exceed $1 million dollars (Ferrell, 112, 2013). The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law by President Obama in 2010 (Ferrell, pg. 110, 2013). The focal mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is to make markets for

About 2009, Wells Fargo came up with a plan to dump unwanted bank products on their depositers.They set "sales quotas" on their employees, and if these quota were not met, employees were fired. The bank set up over a half million credit card accounts to unsupecting costomers of their bank. Extra debit cards were issued and costumers money was moved from one account to bogus account that the bank set up. All the time, Wells Fargo collected a fee for these bogous transactions, from their depositors. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf assured Senator's that he and other top bosses knew nothing about this mass breach of the bank's code of ethics. He then went on to blame low-level employees. CEO John Stumpf kept blaming his $12-an-hour employees for this bank-run swindle of depositors money. Stumpf had a bunch of $12 dollar an hour and mid-level managers fired to back up his claim. Some of the fired employees aked, "what about all those calls that we made to your "ethics hotline" telling you about this fraud. Elizabeth WARREN has chastised WELLS FARGO'S CEO, saying "You should be criminally investigated". She continues with the following statements during Senate hearings into the matter, here are some

Blaylockon (2011) suggested that instead of accepting a payment of almost $228,000 for her silence, Foster wanted to ensure the corrupt practices at Countrywide were exposed and that the wrongdoers were held accountable. In September 2011, OSHA agreed that Foster had been retaliated against in violation of the employee protection provision of the Sarbanes Oxley Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act of 2002. The Department of Labor ordered her a payment of $930,000 in damages, which included back wages, interest, compensatory damages and attorney fees.

Several circumstances determine the protection of whistleblowers. This might include employers reporting violation in the employment discrimination laws and the reporting of hazard communication act. In case an employee is discharged from job for using the employer’s telephone to report violations, the employee can be protected by the whistle blower act in Texas. The whistleblower laws majorly protect the government employees with an approximate of 90% of the government workers benefiting from these laws. However, the private sector employees are not covered by the whistleblower law. Question 9 Over time, stakeholders have played a very significant role in corporations. They are the people who invest on the corporations through devoting their finances to support the running of the corporation. Being the owners of the cooperation’s, stakeholders are responsible for changing the corporation’s capital share and selling the corporations assets. Question 10 Whistleblowers are people who often expose hidden activities that seem illegal or even unethical. These people have a feeling that these activities are not good and hence bring it to the public

Treasury and pay the remaining $250 million to a Fair Fund Distribution to compensate misled investors.24 Furthermore, GS&C agreed to reform the personnel, education, and training of those reviewing and approving certain mortgage securities as well as consent to a permanent injunction from violations of the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933.25 However, interestingly enough, GS&C acknowledged it misled or omitted important information to investors in the consent order, but refrained from admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations.26

These bankers and investors knowingly caused one of the worst economic recessions in American history and they were barely punished for

The main method that was used to penalize large banking institutions for criminal conduct in the years during and after the Great Recession was Eric Holder memo that its too big to fail. Eric Holder memo stated that when briniging charges aganist coorporation, coorporation should cooporate with the governent if they want government to go easy on them and their execcutives. His memo also states that idea of cooliteral consequences. Colliteral consequences is that when considering whether to prosecute the company the economy should be taken to the consideration. White collar crimes that were comited by large institution were led off the hook.The idea was that if the big institution gets prosecuted, it will have negative impact on the economy.

Holder had previously stated that “no bank is too big to jail,” but none of the executives faced any prison time. Credit Suisse was fined $2.6 billion, but critics have pointed out that the fine was quite lenient, considering the extent and brazen nature of their crimes. Mark S. Henry, Senior Economist from Tax Justice Network, joked that “they’re yodeling through the Alps over the light touch of Eric Holder.” He pointed out that their stock price rebounded significantly just one day after the announcement of their fine. The stock’s rebound was enough to pay half the fine. He also mentioned that Credit Suisse’s CEO told shareholders that the penalty would have very little impact on their performance. “To me, a fundamental tenet of justice should be the wrongdoer should pay the penalty, and in this case the shareholders are paying the penalty instead of management,” said Mark Calabria, Director of Financial Regulation Studies at the Cato Institute.

In an age when accelerated communications contribute to growing perceptions of organizational improprieties, the ethical and legal implications of whistleblowing have become a major topic of discussion. According to Lawrence and Weber (2014), whistleblowing is an employee disclosing apparent organizational misconduct to the government or media; however, this reporting of information should come after attempts at going through proper channels in order to persuade the organization to take appropriate actions has been ineffective.

Charges were brought forth in 2010 against Goldman and one of their employees, Fabrice Tourre. It is speculated that the reason only one employee was charged was because he was easily convicted based on the amount of evidence in his emails. The company itself was charged with securities fraud and Tourre was charged for “making materially misleading statements and omissions in connection with a synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO)” (Mogielnicki 80). At the epicenter of the whole debacle was the CDO named Abacus 2007-AC1. This CDO was comprised of poorly rated (BBB) bonds that were selected by John Paulson, head of Paulson & Co. investment company which is based in New York, and ACA Management LLC. The “BBB” rating means that “as the home loans defaulted, these bonds would be among the first to feel the pain,” (Wilchins 1). ACA

As seen recently with Theranos to Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden is in a different country under aslyum and regardless of political views, there was no safety for him. With Theranos, Tyler Shultz has experienced up to $400K in legal fees for whistleblowing and separation with his grandfather. His parents were debating selling their home to cover the legal fees. These two situations prove that there is little to no protection for whisteblowers. Overall, there is nothing that would make more individuals feel safe exposing a company. This should be a huge concern, as preventing unethical behavior should be a huge priority. When companies are damaged by unethical behavior or even close, a lot of harm is caused that more than likely could have been prevented. Corporate America needs to decide if ethics and achieving profit can have synergy and be achieved, or if pleasing shareholders has created a conflict of interest with

The reason how Well Fargo Bank is an ethical quandary would be how they had also have to pay the expensive for the people account that were victims and the 185 million dollar including for the fines.