Comment Text:
Denise Romano
165 Christopher St. 4z
New York, NY 10014-2846
November 23, 2010
Gary Gensler
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Three Lafayette Centre
1155 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20581
Dear Chairman Gensler:
I am deeply concerned that the whistleblower rules the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are currently drafting will not fulfill the Congressional intent of Dodd-Frank. I am concerned that the corporate lobby will have undue influence on the final rules to protect whistleblowers.
I am particularly concerned with admissions by the SEC that their proposed rules would 'limit the pool of eligible whistleblowers,' 'reduce the number of possibly useful informants,' 'discourage some whistleblowers,'
cause 'persons not to come forward,' and result in 'forgone opportunities for effective enforcement action.' These are not the rules that Congress intended. These rules violate the law and undermine the public interest.
The SEC proposed rules completely undermine efforts to protect employees who risk their careers to expose fraud. Incredibly, not only does the SEC admit that their rules undermine the legal protections in Dodd-Frank, but the SEC failed to adopt recommendations of their own Inspector General on how to improve their whistleblower reward program. The SEC proposed rules are so flawed that they must be discarded in their entirety and should be replaced with rules that conform to the recommendations of the SEC Inspector General.
The CTFC should not blindly follow any of the SEC's recommendations and should instead write rules will encourage whistleblowers to report commodities fraud.
Wall Street has been a mean street for any employee who has the guts to step forward to report securities and/or commodities fraud. As a result, every American has suffered from the financial meltdown. The SEC and the CFTC must write rules that will prevent another financial disaster, ensure compliance with the law and encourage employees to risk their careers by becoming whistleblowers.
The SEC's proposed rules will have the opposite effect. Please do everything in your power to ensure that the SEC withdraws its current proposal and approves final rules that protect the public. We cannot afford to have the SEC fail to detect the next Bernie Madoff, costing innocent Americans billions of dollars. Congress, the SEC and the CFTC must do what the law now requires: protect whistleblowers that risk their jobs to report fraud!
Also: There is an epidemic of violations of public safety, fraud, and corruption laws that are directly related to labor law violations in government entities and US corporations. Ethics Commissions, AGs & IGs are unresponsive to labor violation complaints in workplaces and government, even when proof is submitted, tax dollars are misused, and there are rampant ethics, safety, and other compliance violations. The EEOC, OSHA, and State Divisions of Human Rights are underfunded and understaffed, thus their responses to these complaints are almost always delayed and insufficient.
Given that all government employees are required to report legal and ethical noncompliance, mandatory imparital investigations must be implemented without exception and accompanied by absolute prevention of unlawful retaliation against complaining employees. There must be a freeze on any termination of any complaining employee while a sound, impartial, unbiased and thorough investigation is completed, and even afterwards, retaliation against complainants must be prevented.
Violations of EEO, OSHA, public safety, retaliation protections, whistleblower protections, ADA, union-protections and fraud/corruption prevention laws must be classified as serious crimes that result in prosecution. There is extremely insufficient protection for employees who use apropriate channels to report noncompliance in both government and corporate workplaces.
Currently, legal compliance with US labor laws is essentially optional for corporate and government workplaces. Only employees who can afford lawyers have a chance of recourse. Most lawyers will not take cases on contingency, even if complaining employees can prove employer noncompliance with labor and other laws. When there is rare justice, it comes years later - often after unlawful termination and great damage to health, families, and finances.
Most legitimate employee complaints are dismissed by noncompliant employers and/or unions who unlawfully retaliate against these employees, terminate their employment and health coverage and pay them a small sum for which they are desperate and on which they are taxed. This money almost always comes with a gag order, the dismissal of the complaint with government authorities so there is never an investigation, and the continued employment of those guity of serial noncompliance and other violations of law, which remain unremediated.
Many General Counsel attorneys falsely believe their duty is to protect the corporation by any means instead of ensuring legal compliance and remediating noncompliance according to non-retaliation laws. GCs who knowingly cover up unlawful practices in corporations and government entities must be addressed by the criminal justice system and BAR associations given the enormous financial fraud perpetrated upon taxpayers and shareholders when significant funds are used to unlawfully retaliate against employees who exercise their rights to complain about noncompliance. When this occurs in government entities, it is intentional fraudulent misuse of taxpayer money; it is also a frequent occurence.
Furthermore, those who contribute to and/or enable unlawful retaliation by not reporting it need to be held accountable as well. Any of us who have been lucky enough to be able to afford legal counsel must help those who have not and must improve our current system.
These crimes are epidemic and do require deterrence in the form of large fines, improved processes for complaining employees, and guaranteed sound impartial investigations into unlawful practices, even when there are settlements with complaining employees. Gag orders need to be made unlawful, regardless of settlements with employees.
Please Sign this Petition @change: Demand Legal Compliance in US Workplaces http://chn.ge/bO31L8
Sincerely,
Denise A Romano, MA, EdM
212-924-2215
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