{"id":377201,"date":"2019-02-27T10:58:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T15:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/?p=377201"},"modified":"2019-11-13T19:40:29","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T00:40:29","slug":"tipsters-collect-7-5-million-in-first-ever-payouts-under-osc-bounty-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/news\/from-the-regulators\/tipsters-collect-7-5-million-in-first-ever-payouts-under-osc-bounty-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Tipsters collect $7.5 million in first-ever payouts under OSC bounty program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A trio of whistleblowers have received $7.5 million in payouts from the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC)\u2014the first set of awards announced by Canada’s largest regulator, which operates the country’s only program that pays for enforcement tips.<\/p>\n<p>The OSC said Wednesday that it paid out a total of $7.5 million to three whistleblowers in three different enforcement cases. The OSC’s whistleblower program, adopted in 2016, is modelled on a program launched by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2011 to help root out misconduct by offering financial rewards for high-quality enforcement tips.<\/p>\n<p>Regulators don’t provide details on whistleblower cases in order to protect the anonymity of the tipsters. In its announcement, the OSC said that the recipients of its first-ever awards “voluntarily provided high quality, timely, specific and credible information, which helped advance enforcement actions resulting in monetary payments to the OSC.”<\/p>\n<p>Under the OSC’s program, whistleblowers are eligible for financial payouts in cases that result in monetary sanctions of at least $1 million, with payouts ranging from 5% to 15% of the sanctions total. Whistleblower awards are capped at $5 million and can only be paid after all appeals on an enforcement order have been exhausted, which is why payouts under the program can take years to materialize.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur whistleblower program has proven to be a game-changer for the OSC\u2019s enforcement efforts,\u201d said Maureen Jensen, chair and CEO of the OSC, in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis would not be possible without courageous individuals willing to come forward and provide valuable information about harm to Ontario\u2019s capital markets,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>Since the OSC launched its whistleblower program, a couple of other Canadian regulators have set up their own processes to encourage enforcement tips\u2014but these programs do not offer financial rewards.<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, in the U.S., the SEC has now paid out out more than US$326 million to 59 individuals since making its first award in 2012. In turn, these cases involving whistleblowers have generated US$1.7 billion in regulatory enforcement sanctions for the SEC.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhistleblowers expose complex securities misconduct that may not otherwise come to light, allowing us to take timely action,\u201d said Jeff Kehoe, director of enforcement at the OSC, in a statement. \u201cWe hope this announcement, alongside our substantive whistleblower protections, will encourage more whistleblowers to come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rewards were for three separate cases <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2324,2312],"tags":[2443,2491],"yst_prominent_words":[8420,39288,39284,39273,39272,36867,14572,13413,12305,11957,10106,8948,8926,6,6977,6498,5951,5341,2115,2113],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377201"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":377223,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377201\/revisions\/377223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377201"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=377201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}