CFTC Announces Largest Whistleblower Award To Date of More Than $10 Million

12th April 2016

A whistleblower who provided crucial original information that led to a successful U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) enforcement action received an award of more than $10 million on April 4, 2016, the largest award to date made by the CFTC's Whistleblower Program and the third award to a whistleblower who provided valuable information about Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”) violations.

The CFTC's Whistleblower Program was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (the “Dodd-Frank Act”).  Eligible whistleblowers who voluntarily provide original information to the CFTC about CEA violations can receive awards if the information leads to a successful enforcement action for monetary sanctions over $1,000,000.

The award amounts received by whistleblowers can be between 10 percent and 30 percent of the monetary sanctions collected. The awards are financed entirely through monetary sanctions paid to the CFTC by CEA violators and are paid from the CFTC Customer Protection Fund established by Congress. No funds are taken or withheld from harmed investors.

Whistleblowers can also receive monetary awards from the CFTC if the original information supplied to the CFTC by an eligible whistleblower leads another government entity to bring a successful related enforcement action and the CFTC also brings an action based on that same information.

The Dodd-Frank Act provides retaliation protections to whistleblowers whereby employers may not retaliate against whistleblowers for reporting CEA violations to the CFTC. Generally, no employer may discharge, demote, suspend, threaten, harass, directly or indirectly, or in any other manner discriminate against, a whistleblower in the terms and conditions of employment because of any lawful act done by whistleblower.

Whistleblower confidentiality protections are afforded to whistleblowers by law and the CFTC does not disclose information that might directly or indirectly reveal a whistleblower's identity.