Notices Posted by CFTC Whistleblower Office for $260 Million Recordkeeping Case

On August 9, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Whistleblower Office released Notices of Covered Actions (NCAs) regarding recordkeeping charges against major financial institutions. These NCAs signify that the CFTC is now accepting whistleblower award claims for these enforcement actions.

On August 8, the CFTC settled charges against swap dealer and futures commission merchant (FCM) affiliates of four financial institutions: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Wells Fargo, and Bank of Montreal. The charges involved these institutions’ failure to maintain required records and to diligently supervise their businesses as CFTC registrants.  CFTC whistleblower attorney Jason T. Brown stated, “The government remains very committed to making sure that an audit trail exists, and hundreds of millions of dollars of whistleblower awards are flowing to SEC whistleblowers and CFTC whistleblowers who expose the deliberate lack of preservation of audit trails.”

The four institutions collectively agreed to pay the CFTC a total of $260 million to resolve the charges.

The CFTC Whistleblower Program offers monetary awards of 10-30% of collected funds to qualified whistleblowers who provide original information leading to successful enforcement actions. Thus the whistleblower who blew the whistle here could be entitled to up to $78 million dollars as a CFT whistleblower award.

Approximately 30% of all CFTC enforcement investigations arise from whistleblowers, contributing to enforcement actions exceeding $3 billion. The CFTC encourages potential whistleblowers through public alerts to come forward and hold wrongdoers accountable for misconduct surrounding commodities.