On September 11, Sean Franzblau was featured in the Anti-Corruption Report. The article, “DOJ’s Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program Is Live: Exclusions, NDAs and Goals,” explores the DOJ officials first announcement that they would be launching a whistleblower reward program in March 2024. They laid out the basic outlines of what the program could include, but left the details for a 90‑day policy-drafting sprint. Now that the DOJ’s Corporate Whistleblower Awards Pilot Program (WAPP) is in effect, the particulars of the program are clearer – and somewhat surprising.
A section in the article, “Exceptions Allowing Compliance Team to Be Whistleblowers,” features comments from Sean. It states that senior leaders and compliance and audit personnel have the ability to make reports if they have provided the information to the company’s audit committee, chief legal officer, CCO, or their supervisor and 120 days have passed. This exception needs to be read in tandem with the elements of the WAPP designed to encourage internal reporting, and with the edits to the Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Self-Disclosure Policy (CEP), according to Sean Franzblau, a partner at Venable:
In this situation, the presumption of declination against the corporate defendant may have been insufficient to induce disclosure by the entity, so the Justice Department extends WAPP award eligibility to the internal recipient individuals to further incentivize disclosure.
For the full article, click here.