Getnick Law Comments on Proposed Amendments to Anti-Money Laundering Whistleblower Program
Representative Alma Adams (D-NC) has proposed a new bill that would reform the whistleblower provisions of the recently passed Anti-Money Laundering Act (“AMLA”).
Passed in January 2021, the AMLA amended the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) in several ways, including an overhaul of the BSA’s whistleblower provision. As amended by the AMLA, the BSA whistleblower provision offers new incentives for individuals to report BSA violations to federal authorities, while providing a private cause of action against employers who retaliate against employees who blow the whistle. The AMLA’s whistleblower provisions were largely modeled on those of the Dodd-Frank Act, which established the highly successful SEC Whistleblower Program. However, a key difference between the two programs is that unlike the SEC program, the AMLA does not require the government to provide a whistleblower a mandatory minimum percent of a successful recovery based on that whistleblower’s information.
Representative Alma’s proposal seeks to remedy this problem by mandating that qualified whistleblowers receive an award of at least 10% of the government’s recovery. This change would align the AMLA’s whistleblower provision with the SEC’s. In addition, Rep. Alma’s proposal would establish a Financial Integrity Fund, financed through money laundering sanctions, that would guarantee the AMLA whistleblower program is able to pay out whistleblowers. This change would again conform the AMLA program with the SEC program.
Click here to read the text of Representative Alma’s proposal, and click here to learn more about her proposal.
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