Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), testifies before a Senate hearing on the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in the SEC on Capitol Hill, Washington, on 14 September 2021.
Evelyn Hockstein | Swimming pool | Reuters
The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that the total amount of payments it had made to whistleblowers had exceeded $ 1 billion after the financial watchdog had awarded its second-largest prize to a person for marking offenses.
The SEC said a person was paid $ 110 million combined this week for information and assistance that led to successful enforcement actions by the SEC and other entities.
Approximately $ 40 million of this payment was related to a SEC case, with the rest of the related actions of another unidentified agency.
This total award was close to the record $ 114 million issued last October by the regulator, which began paying rewards to whistleblowers in 2012.
Recently, another person received a $ 4 million award for reporting, the SEC said, which raised this year’s payments to more than $ 500 million.
Earlier this year, the third largest whistleblower award was issued, for $ 50 million.
The SEC by law does not disclose the identity of complainants or information that may lead to the disclosure of their identity.
Since the program began, the SEC has paid 207 whistleblowers more than $ 1.07 billion, according to the agency, whose mission is to protect investors and keep markets fair and efficient.
These payments, which range from 10% to 30% of the monetary sanctions imposed by the SEC in excess of $ 1 million, are funded by the sanctions, not by the investors who were harmed.
The SEC said the information provided by whistleblowers since the program began has resulted in more than $ 4.8 billion in financial resources.
“We’ve just reached a milestone,” SEC President Gary Gensler said in a video in a tweet announcing that the $ 1 billion payment threshold had been exceeded.
“All whistleblowers have rendered an important service,” Gensler said. “When I look at the commission’s enforcement actions each week, it reminds me how the whistleblower program helps us be better cops, run our mission, and protect investors from misconduct.”
Gensler in this video encouraged potential whistleblowers to visit the SEC tip website: www.sec.gov/whistleblower.
Earlier Wednesday, during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” group, Gensler said the SEC is addressing a number of challenging enforcement issues, even as it has up to 5 percent fewer staff members. that five years ago.
“We have an IPO boom, we have a SPAC boom, we have cryptocurrencies that we have to deal with,” Gensler said. “I would like to at least come back [staff level] how far we were in 2016 and I think we should probably be 5% or 10% bigger than that. “
Gensler told the Senate Tuesday that he needs “many more people” to help deal with thousands of new digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies.