Strict Compliance Increasingly Critical for SEC Whistleblowers

All-Republican SEC ‘Unusual’ With Pro-Crypto Agenda Likely

By law, the SEC is a bipartisan agency, meaning that at least two of the commissioners must be from another party. The majority partisanship of the agency often reflects whoever is holding office in the White House.

Carol Goforth, distinguished professor and the Wylie H. Davis Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) School of Law, described the situation as “highly unusual.”

She told Cointelegraph that she could find “no example of a situation where all the sitting SEC commissioners were from a single party. In fact, the only examples for any bipartisan agency with members from a single party that I found all involve the current [Trump] administration.”

“Usually,” she said, “there is slow and steady turnover in these positions.” Commissioners serve five-year terms, and chairs generally resign when there is a change in administration. This has “usually worked fairly consistently to preserve the bipartisan nature of these agencies.”

SEC War on ‘Frivolous’ Litigation Upends Wall Street Cop’s Role

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins’ bid to curb “frivolous” shareholder complaints signals a new level of hostility toward investors and lawyers typically viewed as the Wall Street cop’s allies, and the effort has struggled to get off the ground as companies are slow to adopt mandatory arbitration clauses for shareholders.

Championed as a way to boost IPO activity, Atkins’ push to funnel claims away from courts and into private arbitration marks a departure from how the 90-year-old Securities and Exchange Commission views its role as a regulator, shareholder lawyers and an investor advocate said.

“Atkins really stepped out of bounds here with regard to what you would expect from an SEC with investor protection and the preservation of fair, orderly, and efficient markets as their priority,” said Corey Frayer, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America. “‘Frivolous litigation’ is a decades-old euphemism for denying working Americans their day in court.”

Atkins has said he wants to “make IPOs great again” by reducing disclosure requirements, “de-politicizing” shareholder meetings, and permitting companies going public to include mandatory arbitration provisions in registration filings.

For SEC Whistleblowers, Strict Compliance Matters Now More Than Ever

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Whistleblower Program is a cornerstone of securities law enforcement. The program offers eligible whistleblowers financial awards in exchange for their assistance in enforcement actions that yield sanctions greater than $1 million.

The SEC has historically administered the program rigorously, but pragmatically. When Congress created the program in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, it imposed detailed eligibility requirements meant to ensure only meritorious whistleblowers received awards.

Those rules have allowed the SEC to prevent unscrupulous actors from exploiting the program for personal gain. But over the first 15 years of the Program, the SEC occasionally exercised its authority to pay awards to whistleblowers who technically didn’t meet all the eligibility criteria but otherwise acted in good faith in reporting securities fraud to the Commission.

That era is changing. Recent SEC award decisions show a clear trend toward strict compliance with the rules, fewer waivers, and more award denials. For sophisticated insiders—particularly executives who have already raised concerns internally—this shift changes the calculus on both when and how to report securities fraud to the SEC, including the importance of reporting through an attorney.

Leavitt’s abrupt stage exit triggers ‘insider trading’ accusations in prediction markets

Gamblers who bet on the length of the White House’s daily press briefings cried foul on Wednesday after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made the curious decision to end her comments just seconds shy of the 65-minute mark – raking in a small fortune for those fortunate enough to have made such a savvy guess.

At her briefing, a grinning Leavitt introduced new dietary guidelines in alignment with the administration’s “Making America Healthy Again” campaign, addressed President Donald Trump’s oil deal with Venezuela, and discussed the U.S. seizure of a tanker linked to Venezuela for sanctions violations.

But it was her abrupt end to questions that had bettors up in arms.

As she bragged that the White House created a website mocking the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, Leavitt quickly picked up her papers off the podium.

“And so I would encourage everyone to take a look at the website. It’s quite well done. And thank you all very much. It’s great to be back with you,” she concluded as she darted off the stage.

Bettors noted that the briefing had a 98% chance to run past 65 minutes. Instead, she exited with 30 seconds to spare.