What Makes A Whistleblower Law Successful In Today's Globalized World? Part II

Part II: Reward programs for whistleblowers are in nations' best interests and serve as a form of anti-retaliation insurance for whistleblowers.

As explored in Part I of this series, whistleblower laws around the world are nonexistent or largely inadequate and focus primarily on post-retaliation remedies, which often cannot truly make a whistleblower whole and often raise the specter of prolonged and costly litigation against a very powerful and well-financed employer. This in turn has a chilling effect on the willingness of employees to report fraud and take advantage of anti-retaliation laws.

To overcome these barriers to whistleblowing, following the overwhelming success of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission's whistleblower reward program, nations creating new whistleblower laws should begin by implementing an award provision for successful whistleblower tips (as recently implemented by Lithuania). An effective provision might read: