The SEC "Whistleblower Industrial Complex"

SEC Whistleblower Awards Program Might Have a Revolving-Door Problem, Study Says

Even though the SEC whistleblower award program has been applauded for its success in detecting and investigating potential wrongdoings, the private, unregulated industry of whistleblower attorneys may be distorting the program’s goal to encourage more whistleblowing, a recent research paper by Alexander Platt, associate professor of law at University of Kansas School of Law, said.

The paper argues that a disproportionate share of awards is going to a concentrated group of “well-connected, repeat players” who may be using their connections to help their clients’ claims. That could ultimately deter potential whistleblowers from coming forward, according to the working paper.

Florida Governor DeSantis Claims Win Against E.S.G.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida yesterday advanced his campaign against environmental, social and governance investing. The State Board of Administration, on which he sits, adopted his proposal to ban the consideration of “social, political or ideological interests” when making investment decisions for the state’s pension fund.

***

The resolution imposes broad limits on the pension fund’s investments. State administrators will be instructed to prioritize “the highest return on investment for beneficiaries, without consideration for nonpecuniary beliefs or political factors.”

Move Over ESG |Meet The BAD ETF (NYSE: BAD) – BAD Investments

The rise of contrarian-ESG funds are becoming more prevalent as regulators crack down on ESG fund managers, and the general investing public is seeing the cracks in the facade.

Fortunately, there’s one money manager that decided that B-A-D might be the better acronym for investors. The BAD ETF (NYSE: BAD) launched last December and is taking a different stance in this green washed world focusing on 3 industries for which the ticker represents – B-A-D.

* Betting – Casinos, gaming, and online gaming operations – 33%* Alcohol – Alcoholic beverage manufacturing and distribution – 23%* Drugs – Pharmaceutical and biotechnology product development and manufacturing – 33% 10% Cannabis cultivators & distributors

Wall Street Friendship Ends in Betrayal, Insider-Trading Charges

They were business school buddies who landed at top Wall Street firms — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc — lived for a time in the same Manhattan high-rise, played squash regularly and partied overseas together.

And then one of them wore a wire and recorded his friend allegedly asking him to delete incriminating text messages.

Yet Another Individual Enforcement Action Involving Venezuela

As highlighted in this recent post, approximately 55% of individual enforcement actions on the DOJ’s FCPA website since 2018 concern non-FCPA offenses in connection with alleged foreign bribery schemes – most often money laundering offenses – and an astounding 37% or so of individual enforcement actions involve just one country: Venezuela.

Continuing this theme, the DOJ announced yesterday that a federal grand jury in Miami returned an indictment charging Rafael Rixon Rafael Moreno Oropeza (a Venezuelan national) for laundering the proceeds of substantially inflated procurement contracts obtained by making bribe payments to senior officials at Petropiar, a joint venture between Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company and an American oil company.

Crypto’s massive marketing efforts have drawn few new investors

Over the past year, crypto companies like FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to attract new customers. “Fortune favors the brave,” Matt Damon famously said in a Crypto.com TV spot as he tried to induce Americans to open their digital wallets.

Now a study of how successful they were has been returned, and experts say it’s an eye-opening one: not successful at all. The number of people who invested in crypto has not expanded since last September before the push began, according to the study, led by Pew Research Center.