The Securities and Exchange Commission's record $279 million whistleblower award handed out earlier this month was the result of a tip about a bribery case against telecommunications giant Ericsson, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The reward came from the SEC's cash-for-tips program and was related to a $1.1 billion settlement Ericsson, a Swedish company, had reached in 2019 with the U.S relating to allegations that it conspired to make illegal payments to win business in five nations, the newspaper said. Such a move violates U.S. antibribery laws.
The Journal attributed the information to people familiar with the matter.
In early May, the SEC announced that it rewarded an unnamed whistleblower with $279 million, the largest payout in the agency's history.
The SEC has not named the case to which the whistleblower's information led. Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, had said the SEC hopes the award "incentivizes whistleblowers" to come forward with accurate information about potential securities law violations.
The SEC pays whistleblower awards of 10% to 30% of money collected from monetary sanctions exceeding $1 million.
The commission's previous record whistleblower award was $114 million in October 2020, to an anonymous person.
The money is drawn from monetary sanctions paid to the SEC's investor protection fund by securities law violators, as ratified by Congress. No money was taken from disgorgement funds taken from harmed investors, the SEC said.
According to the Journal, prosecutors in Manhattan who brought the charges in 2019 said that Ericsson's wrongdoing happened in Djibouti, China, Vietnam, Kuwait, and Indonesia from 2000 to 2016.
The SEC's complaint alleged that the company's subsidiaries won business worth about $427 million by using third parties to bribe officials in Saudi Arabia, China, and Djibouti, the newspaper reported.
Spokesmen for the SEC and Ericsson declined comment, the Journal said. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the charges against Ericsson, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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