

US’s CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, revealed that yet another whistleblower had received a reward for cooperating.
This unknown individual gave a crucial tip which led to an open investigation by the CFTC. The undisclosed individual later provided credible and timely information, as well as essential documents that turned the tables for the investigation. This, in turn, brought in a successful enforcement action. Furthermore, these aforementioned documents helped the CFTC detect the harm that was done to users.
James McDonald, the Division of Enforcement Director, revealed that “the violations would have been difficult to detect without the whistleblower’s information and assistance”.
The name of the informer has been kept in secrecy, and will continue to do so, as the CFTC has a specific policy that covers this.
This news comes at a time when the CFTC is on a sort of a roll; the end of July saw another whistleblower award, this one amounting to $9 million.
As of now, the CFTC has awarded a total of $120 million since 2014. As a result, the whistleblower program has resulted in nearly $1.5 billion in financial penalties payed out by culprits.
The whistleblower initiative, when passed, was not without its fair share of controversy, and was faced by opposition from big companies. These firms argued that the legislative would hurt their own compliance programs, while also encouraging their employees to report malpractices to the CFTC instead of reporting them to the appropriate management branch in the company.