Back in November we reported that the UK and China top the list of non US whistleblowers accounting for nearly 30% each in the first report published by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

While we noted the sample was small our Christmas Quiz underscored the awareness of the Dodd Frank Whistleblower legislation in the UK – the majority of those who participated in the quiz were UK based.

In answer to a question about the levels of awards whistleblowers can receive under Dodd Frank a staggering 88% correctly identified that whistleblowers could receive potentially hundreds of millions under the scheme with awards ranging from between 10% to 30% of the SEC penalty.  The remaining 12% thought that the awards were capped up to US$5million.

Three quarters of those surveyed answered correctly that over 90% would shop competitors to enforcement agencies for bribery – a statistic we published last year (and which is consistent with the awareness of Dodd Frank).

This suggests that there is a strong likelihood that UK companies and individuals will shop their competitors and throw their hats into the ring for the prize of an SEC bounty payment.  It would be interesting to know the amount of calls SFO Confidential has received.

In another surprising statistic three quarters of those surveyed were also aware of the threat of the use of tax violations in the context of anti-bribery enforcement signalled by the Director of the SFO last year.

90% were familiar with the Financial Services Authority approach to anti-bribery controls.

The figures suggest that there is a good awareness of the Bribery Act.

However, we were surprised to learn that just under half of those surveyed were not aware of the SFO’s additional guidance in relation to facilitation payments which we published last July. We shall keep the link on our home page for a while longer…