Guest Blogger – Victor Vital

Much has been written about the new bounty-provisions in the Dodd-Frank bill passed this summer. SEC-regulated companies are bracing themselves for an uptick in enforcement actions stemming from whistle-blowers. Also legal commentators and the compliance community are very concerned about the new bounty provisions that they fear will incentivize whistle-blowers to bypass compliance programs that companies have spent considerable sums of money and effort creating, partly in response to government regulation.

Now enter WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is the topic de jour, with its market-moving impact demonstrated by Bank of America’s 3% stock decline in response to speculation that it is an imminent target of WikiLeaks. (see WSJ story – here). Of interest to readers of this blog is whether WikiLeaks will cause the SEC and the CFTC to become even more aggressive than they may have previously planned to be in encouraging whistle-blowers to come forward and in rewarding those whistle-blowers. Given the government’s great consternation at WikiLeaks’ disclosures, it seems natural that the government might step up its efforts to encourage whistle-blowers to disclose original information of corporate misconduct through government-sanctioned channels. Just something to ponder.

Victor Vital is partner at Baker Botts L.L.P. whose practices focuses on white collar criminal defense and complext litigation matters.