[Canada] Puxley, Chinta, "Pathologist whistleblower alleges patient safety at risk due to 'toxic' workload," metronews.ca, December 11, 2009.
A whistleblower alleges excessive workloads in Manitoba pathology labs have led to the wrong diagnosis in at least one case, but provincial health officials say it doesn't appear patients are at risk. Click here to read more.
[UK] Verkaik, Robert, "Baby P whistle-blower to sue council," The Independent, December 11, 2009.
The senior social worker who first warned the Government about serious failings in the investigation of childcare cases - six months before the death of Baby Peter - is suing Haringey Council for vitimisation. Click here to read more.
[France] Sage, Adam, "HSBC whistleblower in hiding amid money laundering investigation," TimesOnline, December 10, 2009.
Swiss authorities have opened a criminal inquiry after allegations that a former HSBC employee gave stolen data concerning client accounts at the bank's Geneva branch to French tax authorities. Click here to read more.
[Ireland] Burke-Kennedy, Eoin, "Safeguards for whistleblowers sought," Irishtimes.com, December 9, 2009.
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) has called on the Government to establish legal safeguards for employees who expose wrongdoing or corrupt practice in their pieces of work. Click here to read more.
It is outdated, but this case shows whistleblower's fearful situation in Azerbaijan.
Mahammad Gurbanov, a 55 year old resident of Nakchivan city who was placed in a mental hospital by employees of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Internal Affairs Ministry with second degree disability on September 11, 2009, was finally released on October 10 from the hospital after 29 days in detention.
Gurbanov was a small trader who brought goods from Turkey’s Igdir village and sold them in Nakchivan city. When he was at Diluchu-Sadarak checkpoint last time to enter Azerbaijan, custom officers asked him a bribe for the goods he brought. After Gurbanov declined to pay the bribe, his goods were confiscated and his travel to Turkey was banned. Gurbanov appealed about the actions committed by the custom officers to Nakhchivan’s Customs Committee and Supreme Council. Two days after he appealed, policemen captured him in his house and sent to a psychiatric hospital. He forcefully signed an admission that he was mentally ill. He was not permitted to meet with his family and relatives.
On September 30, Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic Democracy and NGO Development Resource Center appealed to international and local Human Rights organizations about Gurbanov’s circumstances.
On October 10, 2009, Mental Health Day, he was finally released from the hospital. He said "I don't have any health problems. I didn't receive any treatment in the hospital, because I didn't need it."
According to Azerbaijan Country Profile from Business Anti-Corruption Portal, it is common for foreign business people to be asked for bribes by customs officials when they cross Azerbaijan borders and total bribes may reach 35% of the value of imported goods. Global Integrity Report 2008 states that whistleblowing system in Azerbaijan is very week. There is no specific law to protect individuals who blow the whistle about fraud and corruption.
[Iran] "Iran whistleblower dies from drug-laced salad," Associated Press, December 2, 2009.
A 26-year-old doctor who exposed the torture of jailed protesters in Iran died of poisoning from a delivery salad laced with overdose of blood pressure medication, prosecutors say. The findings fueled opposition fears that he was killed because of what he knew... Click here to read more.
[TI] "Inadequate laws expose whistleblowers and impede fight against corruption," December 3, 2009.
Most of the 10 European countries included in a new report by Transparency International (TI) lack adequate laws to protect whistleblowers who often take risks and brave possible sanctions to expose wrongdoing, including corruption. Click here to read more.
[Malta] Flores, Charles, "Whistling in the dark and blowing in the wind," The Malta Independent Online, December 3, 2009.
There must have been people who, like me, were left speechless by the Prime Minister's description, on RTL Radio last week, of a whistleblower. Rather than the welcome tome of admiration and the soothing assurance of protection one is... Click here to read more.
[Canada] Bron, Ian, "Colvin is indeed a whistleblower," Ottawa Citizen, December 1, 2009.
On Saturday on this page, Amir Attaran and Gar Pardy came to the defence of Richard Colvin, the diplomat who testified to a parliamentary committee that he had warned senior government official about the torture of Afghan detainees. Click here to read more.
[Australia] "Teacher bullied to keep quiet on problem schools," news.com.au, November 30, 2009.
The Queensland Opposition said whisteblowing teachers were being bullied by other teacher to keep problems in schools quiet. New figures released by the State Government showed the number of complaints of bullying and aggressive behavior... Click here to read more.
[China] Ang, Ben Lim Chiow, "It takes courage to be a whistle blower," China Daily, November 30, 2009.
What action would you take if you discovered your superior was abusing their position? All too often it's a case of damn if you do and damn if you don't. Blowing the whistle might put your own rice bowl at stake, by keeping silent comes with... Click here to read more.
The managing engineer of the power system control section at the Tshwane municipality, Jaco Weyers, who refuged to appoint affirmative action candidates after they did poorly in their job selection tests, has been protected by a court decision... Click here to read more.
[UK] "Whistleblower secures £442k in compensation," Russel Jones & Walker, November 24, 2009.
A former local authority employee who suffered harassment and was sacked after complaining about a new management appointment has been awarded a payout of £442,466. Click here to read more.
It is better to save as PDF files if you want to keep the news.
Please follow on my twitter to read worldwide whistleblower news.
[Canada] MacCharles, Tonda, Richard Colvin: Portrait of a
whistleblower, theStar.com,
November 21, 2009.
Talk to people who know Richard Colvin and a few key traits
emerge. Driven, committed to Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Knows his stuff.
Takes copious notes. Sociable, yet discreet. Above all, discreet. Click
here to read more.
[USA] Bottemiller, Helena, “GAP Highlights Role of
Whistleblowers,” Food Safety News,
November 21, 2009.
The Government Accountability
Project (GAP) held a conference yesterday focused on the important role
whistleblowers play in protecting the food supply, exploring ways to empower
more food workers to speak out against inhumane and unsafe practices in the
food system. Click
here to read more.
[Vietnam] Huy, Dam, “Company chief arrested for having
whistleblower killed, Thanhnien News.com, November 21, 2009.
Ngo Quang Truong, director of real estate investor Hoang Hai
Ltd. in Hoc Mon District, was detained after the police caught four men involved
in the murder: Bui Quoc Huy, Tran Van Khoa from the northern Vinh Phuc
Province, Vu Van Luan from the northern Hai Phong City and Ngo Chi Huan from
the Mekong Delta’s Hau Giang Province. Click
here to read more.
[Australia] McCarthy, Joanne, “No help for Orkopoulos
whistleblower Gillian Sneddon,” theherald.com.au., November 21, 2009.
GILLIAN Sneddon has officially fallen through the cracks in
the system. She helped police put her former boss, Swansea MP Milton
Orkopoulos, in jail for child sex offences, but NSW Deputy Ombudsman Chris
Wheeler has confirmed what Ms Sneddon already knew there is nowhere she can
turn for help about her treatment as a whistleblower. Click
here to read more.
[USA] Joshi, Bharat, “Don’t Shoot the Messenger,” Wall
Street Journal, November 20,
2009.
All organizations (not just businesses) require honest,
periodic sizing up(s) to appreciate the position they're in and the changing
landscape around them. While some of this is regulatory or obligatory --
financial audits, for instance -- others are discretionary such as consultants,
quality control, human resource audits and the like. Click here to read more.
[Malta] Vella, Francesca, “Whistleblower Act expected
shortly,” The Malta Independent,
November 20, 2009.
Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici
said yesterday that the Whistleblower Act is expected to be introduced shortly,
possibly towards the end of the year or the beginning of next year. Click here to
read more.
[USA] “New Jersey Hospital Settles Medicare Fraud Case,” Avvo, November 19, 2009.
A hospital in northern New Jersey will pay the U.S.
government more than $3 million in a settlement, after a lawsuit alleged the
care facility defrauded Medicare. The Trinitas Regional Medical Center in
Elizabeth, New Jersey, was named by whistleblower Tony Kite in 2005 for
allegedly inflating their charges for delivering care to Medicare patients to
obtain increased reimbursements from the government-funded system. Click
here to read more.
[Iran] McGough, Steve, “Whistleblower Iranian physician
dead,” Radio Vice Online,
November 18, 2009.
Well isn’t this just grand. Twenty-six year old Iranian
prison doctor Ramin Pourandarjani who went public with reports of torture and
murder after the recently-squashed Iranian revolution is dead after a car
accident. Or is it a heart attack. Or maybe suicide. Or maybe he was poisoned. Click
here to read more.
[USA] Quinlan, Paul, “Former port official wins nearly
$500,000 settlement in whistleblower suit over firing,” The Palm Beach Post
News, November 18, 2009.
Michael Davis says the first time he ever got into trouble
with his boss at the Port of Palm Beach was when he reported that a colleague
ordered the port's private security guards to search valet-parked cars of
customers away on gambling cruises. Click
here to read more.
According to Radio Free Europe, Aleksei Dymovsky, the Russian whistleblower who blew the whistle about Russian police's corruption on You Tube, is in danger.
Please click here to read more.
[USA] Renner, Richard,"Whistleblowers reveal how State Street overcharged California $56 million, National Whistleblower Center Blog, October 20, 2009.
A whistleblowers' lawsuit has prompted the State of California to sue
State Street Bank for over $200 million. The suit alleges, and
California's Attorney General has confirmed, that State Street cheated
California pension funds by overcharging for foreign exchange
transactions. State Street Bank slyly used the trading day’s highest
possible exchange rate to charge the pension funds, instead of the
agreed upon interbank rate at the time of the trade. Click here to read more.
[USA] Korecki, Natasha, "MPC Products whistleblower's reward: $4.5 million," Chicago Sun-Times, October 16, 2009.
It was a Saturday in 2005 when Joe Caputo got the phone call. The FBI was raiding his employer's office. Could he come over? Caputo arrived at MPC Products Corp., a Skokie-based defense contractor, was handed a jacket and rushed through a back door. Click here to read more.
[Philippines] Pazzibugan, Dona, "Broadband whistleblower seeks printed record automated polls," Inquirer Politics, October 20, 2009.
MANILA, Philippines—Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada, key witness in the bribery scandal over the botched $329-million national broadband network
deal, said the automated election system to be implemented in the May
2010 national elections should have a printed record of votes. Lozada, who had described himself as an information technology
Inc. (TIM) should have a point of transaction acknowledgment (POTA) so that the votes could later be verified. Click here to read more.
[USA] "Tax Whistleblower Tips to IRS Skyrocket Thanks to Bigger Rewards," Newsinferno.com, October 14, 2009.
Tax cheats beware! It looks like a 2006 law that increased monetary rewards for Federal tax whistleblowers
is working. According to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) report
detailed by The New York Times, tips about suspected tax cheats owing
at least $2 million have jumped more than tenfold. Click here to read more.
[USA] Wired Undercover by FBI, Whistleblower Helps government Recover $25 Million Defense Contracting Fraud, Reuters, October 15, 2009. Click here to read more.
Blaylock Dylan, "D.C. Firefighter Terminated For Whistleblowing," Common Dreams.Org, October 13, 2009.
Firefighter
Vanessa Coleman, previously a Captain with the D.C. Fire &
Emergency Medical Services (F&EMS) Department and a 19-year veteran
of the force, has been fired from her position as a result of blowing
the whistle on wrongful actions taken against her by Department
officials. Click here to read more.
Brown, Tom, "US jails whistleblower - and offshore tax cheat probes could be harder, The Royal Gazette, October 12, 2009.
The
key informant in the US tax evasion case against Swiss bank UBS AG
faces prison next year, but his harsher-than-expected treatment by the
US Justice Department will undermine efforts to expose secretive
offshore tax havens, lawyers and whistle-blower advocates say. Bradley
Birkenfeld, a 44-year-old US citizen, has been hailed by his attorneys
and prosecutors alike as pivotal to the tax case against UBS , his
former employer. Click here to read more.
[USA] Jaffe, Matthew,"IRS Tax Fraud Program Reveals $65B in Under Reported Income in 2008, ABC News, October 7, 2009.
A government watchdog today said the Internal Revenue Service's program
to prevent tax fraud led to $65 billion in under-reported income in
2008, but the program is still marred by deficiencies.Click here to read more.
[USA] McCray, Mike, "Acorn "Informants" and Whistleblowers," OpEdNews, October 8, 2009.
A new film "The Informant" recently
opened to less than rave reviews. The movie is loosely based on the
true-life story of one individual who helped break the largest
corporate corruption case (at that time) and involved the world wide
price fixing of food. The movie is based on the story of ADM scientist
Mark Whittacre and is an often amusing satire about a deluded thief who
stole from his crooked company; and then cooperated with the
authorities. Click here to read more.
[USA] Tyson Foods Chicken Whistleblower, Lawyersandsettlements.com, October 3, 2009.
In March 2009 Dale Adams, a former employee of Tyson Foods, filed a
lawsuit in the U.S. District Court against Tyson Foods Inc. Adams blew
the whistle on the world's largest meat processor and the second
largest chicken producer in the US when he revealed that one of its
plants was washing off chickens that had fallen to the floor and were
supposed to be condemned by the USDA. And Adams alleges his whistleblower action caused his termination. Click here to read more.
[USA] Brodsky, Robert, Senate bill would protect contractor whistleblowers, Government Executive, October 2, 2009.
The head of the Senate contracting oversight subcommittee introduced
legislation on Thursday that would provide whistleblower rights to
employees of companies receiving government contracts. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., sponsored the legislation (S. 1745)
that would also apply to employees of state and local governments,
nonprofits, and other companies receiving grants or other federal
reimbursements such as Medicare. "Whistleblowers are our first line of defense against waste, fraud
and abuse," McCaskill said. "We've got to do everything possible to
protect them." Click here to read more.
[USA] Donmoyer, Ryan J., IRS Whistleblower Claims Quadruple on Informants, Bloomberg, October 1, 2009.
The number of Americans turning in
neighbors, clients and employers to the Internal Revenue Service
to collect a reward quadrupled last year to 476, with more than
one-tenth of the cases alleging tax cheating in excess of $100
million, the agency said. Whistleblowers last year provided the identities of 1,246
taxpayers accused of owing at least $2 million each, the IRS
said. Congress changed the IRS whistleblower program in 2006 to
make it easier for informants to be rewarded with up to 30
percent of any taxes collected as a result of their information. Click here to read more.
[USA] U.S. sees tips rise on tax cheats, Reuters, October 1, 2009.
The number of whistleblowers
reporting big-money tax cheats has accelerated dramatically in
recent years, according to government data released on
Thursday. A December 2006 law boosted rewards for those giving key
information on cases involving evasion of $2 million and more,
and made such rewards mandatory. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service's whistleblower office,
created under the law, received data on potential tax evasion
by 1,246 wealthy Americans and businesses in fiscal 2008 -- an
average about 100 per month. Click here to read more.
[UK] Protection for individuals making disclosures to the FRC, Financial Reporting Council News, October 1, 2009.
With effect from 1 October 2009, the FRC and three
of its Operating Bodies, the Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board
(AADB), the Financial Reporting Review Panel (FRRP), and the
Professional Oversight Board (POB), have been added to the list of
bodies to which employees can responsibly disclose information under
the “whistle blowing” provisions of the Employment Rights Act (1996). Click here to read more.
[USA] Whistleblower Policy enacted to monitor campus misconduct, The Hawk, September 30, 2009.
A policy to protect students, employees, and faculty members, who
report fraudulent, dishonest, or criminal activities was recently
enacted by the university. According to Sharon O'Grady
Eisenmann, the assistant vice president for Human Resources, a version
of the "whistleblower" policy is typical in most university
communities. The policy is in place to ensure that the school is governed well and that funds are being used appropriately. Click here to read more.
[USA] Indiana hospital settle Medicare lawsuit, Indianapolis Business Journal, September 30, 2009.
Six hospital systems—three in Indiana and three in Alabama—have agreed
to pay the federal government $8.3 million to settle a whistleblower
lawsuit alleging the hospitals deliberately overcharged Medicare for
routine back surgeries. The three systems in Indiana, including two in
the Indianapolis area, accounted for $6 million of the settlement. St.
Francis Hospital in Beech Grove will pay the most, $3.1 million.
Deaconess Hospital in Evansville will pay $2.1 million and St. John’s
Hospital in Anderson will pay $826,256. Click here to read more.
[USA] Flessner, Dave, Nuclear whistleblower wins case with TVA contractor, Timefreepress.com, September 28, 2009.
A TVA contractor violated federal whistleblower protection laws in
2004 when it fired a worker who complained to regulators about
substandard coatings in the cooling system of the Browns Ferry Nuclear
Plant, according to a ruling made public today. In a 16-page opinion issued last week, the U.S. Department of
Labor’s administrative review board concluded that Stone & Webster
Engineering Corp. improperly fired Jrery Speegle, a foreman at the
Browns Ferry plant. Mr. Speegle was dismissed just two days after he
reported his safety concerns about the paint and coating used in one of
the safety systems at Browns Ferry. Click here to read more.
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