A group of seven whistleblowers will share an award of more than US$100 million from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The whistleblowers included two pairs of joint claimants and three other individuals who all provided information that contributed to the SEC’s investigation.
Among other things, they provided documents to support allegations of misconduct, attended interviews with investigators and helped identify potential witnesses, the regulator said.
“Today’s awards show that specific and credible information plays an integral part in the SEC’s enforcement efforts,” said Creola Kelly, chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, in a release.
“These whistleblowers provided information that helped enforcement staff detect and prosecute wrongdoing in a timely manner.”
In addition to the seven tipsters who are sharing in the fourth-largest award ordered under the SEC’s whistleblower program, the regulator also denied claims from several other purported whistleblowers in the same case.
One of the rejected claimants was denied after the SEC found that much of the information they provided was subject to attorney-client privilege, so it couldn’t be shared with SEC investigators and didn’t help its case.