Abstract
In recent years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has aggressively enforced the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), which prohibits bribing foreign officials for business purposes. In doing so, it has relied heavily on tips from its increasingly popular whistleblower program, including ones received from scores of foreign countries. However, foreign whistleblowers enjoy unequal protections vis-à-vis their U.S. counterparts. For instance, foreign whistleblowers are not protected against retaliation for lawfully reporting information to the SEC. Worse still, some foreign whistleblowers are less protected than others due to inadequate protections in their domestic systems, and some face especially great risks for exposing corrupt officials. This Note argues that Congress should provide additional protections to foreign whistleblowers who report FCPA violations and are at greater risk of retaliation. This Note is the first to argue for immigration incentives and outlines two potential solutions: creating a new “W” visa or amending the existing S-5 “informant” visa.
Citation
Ken Krmoyan,
Immigration Incentives in FCPA Enforcement: The Case for Protecting At-Risk Foreign Whistleblowers,
73 Duke Law Journal
657-693
(2023)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol73/iss3/3