The Securities and Exchange Commission announced an award of more than a million dollars to a compliance professional who provided information that assisted the SEC in an enforcement action against the whistleblower’s company. By law, the SEC cannot disclose information that might directly or indirectly reveal the identities of whistleblowers so the complete information regarding this action is not available.
Andrew Ceresney, the Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement stated “This compliance officer reported misconduct after responsible management at the entity became aware of potentially impending harm to investors and failed to take steps to prevent it.”
According to the SEC, this is the second award to an internal audit or compliance professional. These verdicts may change how upper management views compliance officers, more as adversaries rather than risk management partners. Compliance officers should consider having an outside and independent firm audit the firm’s regulatory compliance to help alleviate this situation.
Please click here to read the release.
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Red Oak Compliance Solutions is the global advertising review software of choice in the financial services industry. It is a comprehensive suite of SEC 17A-4 compliant features that are 100% books and records compliant and provides clients with 35% faster approvals and 70% fewer touches or better. We also offer Smart Review(SM), which solves for the storage and maintenance of disclosures, helping firms reduce risk, decrease review times, and increase the speed of distribution of marketing materials. Smart Registration(SM) automates the licensing and registration management process to help reduce regulatory risk and time spent on manual processes. Overall, Red Oak allows firms to minimize risk, reduce costs, and increase compliance review process effectiveness and efficiencies.