Not all the recent whistleblower news from Capitol Hill involves the president and the Ukraine.  The House last week passed a bill that would add a whistleblower protection provision to rules governing a national accounting oversight board. And on Monday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), introduced a bill that advocates say will protect whistleblowers who report financial crimes internally before going to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

That bill would address the impact of last year’s Supreme Court decision in Digital Realty Trust Inc. v. Somers.  The ruling limited protected whistleblowing to disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), leaving those who report internaly vulnerable, according to Stephen Kohn, chair of the National Whistleblower Center. 
Continue Reading Lawmakers take up bills to protect whistleblowers who expose financial and wildlife crimes

Whistleblowers would be protected and rewarded for exposing accounting misdeeds under a bill scheduled for a vote in the House this week. The bill would attach a whistleblower protection provision to rules governing the the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) – often referred to as “Peekaboo.”

The PCAOB, according to the panels’website, “oversees the audits of public companies and SEC-registered brokers and dealers in order to protect investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate, and independent audit reports.”

But, according to a recent investigation by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), it’s doing a terrible job. Could better protections for whistleblowers get the effort back on track? One of the recommendations in the POGO report notes that “whistleblowers could help make enforcement of the audit firm industry easier and more effective.”Continue Reading Report: Whistleblowers could help expose auditing fraud at publicly traded companies