For all those interested, the IRS has issued new guidance for claimants under the IRS whistleblower law. They are seeking public comment on the proposed regulations.
See the IRS' proposed rules here.
As stated in section 4 of the document, public comments will be accepted by mail or electronically at Notice.comments@irscounsel.treas.gov.
Jason Zuckerman of the Employment Law Group blogs this issue here
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Bassem Youssef, a Supervisory Special Agent with the FBI, will be speaking at the American Library Association (ALA) conference in Philadelphia on Saturday, January 12th. Mr. Youssef (pictured at right with former FBI director Louis Freeh) is a whistleblower who exposed major shortcomings in the Bureau's conterterrorism efforts, including the fact that top counterterrorism officials have no knowledge of even the most elementary details regarding the Muslim religion or terrorist ideology (See Jon Stewart's hilarious "Daily Show" segment, featuring information from Mr. Youssef's case).
Mr. Youssef is slated to address the ALA about the FBI's use of "National Security Letters" to obtain phone records of Americans without a warrant. The NSL debacle was reported in the Washington Post earlier this year. Mr. Youssef will also speak about his experiences as a whistleblower.
The ALA has long been a champion for civil liberties, privacy and intellectual freedom.
The op-ed page of the New York Times contained an editorial today about the passage of S.274, the Senate whistleblower protection legislation (we blogged it here) , and the need for a strong bill to come out of conference. Check it out:
Another big legislative announcement! We received word today that the False Claims Act Amendments Act of 2007 has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Howard Berman. The bill number is HR. 4854.
This bill is designed to be companion legislation for the False Claims Act Correction Act of 2007, which was introduced in the Senate in September of this year by Senators Grassley, Leahy, Durbin and Specter. The legislation is intended to correct loopholes in the False Claims Act, a law which permits private citizens to file suit against contractors who defraud the federal government.
The NWLDEF and the National Whistleblower Center fully support this legislation, and urge Congressional Leaders to make it a priority when they return from recess.
**UPDATE: THE FULL TEXT OF THE LEGISLATION IS LINKED HERE
This week, Congressman Albert Wynn introduced the Congressional Disclosures Act (HR. 4650), legislation to protect federal employees from retaliation when they make disclosures to members of Congress. This is important legislation and it has been strongly supported by the National Whistleblower Center and many other public interest groups.
This bill is the second of the No FEAR (Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation) laws, the first of which was enacted in 2002, and has been described as "the first civil rights law of the 21st century."
Late last night, the U.S. Senate finally got the job done, unanimously passing S.274, the Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act. This law, along with its companion house legislation (H.R.985), if preserved in conference, would go a long way towards protecting every single federal whistleblower and federal government contractor from retaliation when they report illegal activity to their supervisor. This legislation will effectively overturn the terrible Supreme Court Decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, which held that government employees are not protected by the First Amendment when they report concerns at work.
More on this issue to come...
Below is the text of today's National Whistleblower Center Press release:
Washington, DC., December 18, 2007. Last evening the U.S. Senate, by unanimous consent, passed the Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act (S.274). This law enhances the protection for federal employee whistleblowers by expanding the scope of protected activity to cover complaints within an employees chain of command.
Passage of S.274 now sets the stage for a conference between the House and Senate to agree final legislative language. On March 14, 2007 the House enacted the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (H.R. 985), which expanded the scope of whistleblower protections to national security related agencies, permitted employees to obtain jury trials in federal court, provided enhanced protections for federal contractors and protected employees who exposed misconduct to their managers.
“The House and Senate whistleblower protections laws complement each other. They need to be melded together in conference and immediately enacted into law. Only by combining the best of both bills will federal employees obtain realistic protection. Until then, the taxpayers and citizens will remain the losers in this debate, as billions of dollars in waste remains unreported and government officials who violate the law and mislead the American people escape accountability,” said Stephen M. Kohn, the President of the National Whistleblower Center.
“The Senate Action now sets the stage for the final passage of what will be one of the most important laws enacted by this Congress,” added Kohn.
The House and Senate bills were strongly endorsed by a broad coalition of public groups, including the National Whistleblower Center, the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project and Taxpayers Against Fraud, the No Fear Coalition, the Make it Safe Coalition, the Liberty Coalition, and the Bill of Rights Foundation, among numerous others.
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The National Whistleblower Center announced today that a major Whistleblower/Civil Rights tax case has been filed with the Supreme Court. The case, Murphy v. IRS, has generated a lot of attention in the past year, and certainly puts forth questions that beg a grant of certiorari.
At the heart of the case is whether the IRS has the constitutional right to tax plaintiffs' court awards for non-physical compensatory damages, such as emotional distress and loss of reputation.
The case was brought by Marrita Murphy, an environmental whistleblower who won her case before the Department of Labor, and was awarded compensatory damages to vindicate her rights under six federal environmental whistleblower statutes. Murphy filed suit when that IRS demanded that she pay taxes on the "make-whole" award.
Murphy v. IRS has the potential to affect thousands of past and future victims of civil rights violations and whistleblower retaliation.
UPDATE 1/16/08: To see the latest on Murphy v. IRS, click here
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This weekend, The Detroit News reported that the remaining federal criminal charges against DOJ whistleblower Richard Convertino will be dropped. Mr. Convertino, a career federal prosecutor, was hit with conspiracy and obstruction charges after blowing the whistle on DOJ mismanagement of terror investigations.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that the False Claims Act is supposed to be a Whistleblower law. Something is strange when there's a 670 Million Dollar settlement under this law and it’s actually pretty hard to find out what happened. (The only reports I could find were in the Corporate Crime Reporter and a paragraph five mention in this Associated Press article)
There's a lot of good news in the fact that Merck had to pay this money, but we'll have to wait for all the details because it seems many of the documents are still under seal. False Claims Act Plaintiffs always have a hard time adjusting to the idea that they have to keep their mouths shut to let the Government investigate their claims. In this case, the Government should be congratulated - they got a huge result. Yet one of the points of the law is to deter the type of behavior Merck engaged in, and it's hard to see how keeping the results quiet does that.
We were able to find one court document, the Complaint filed in Nevada under that State's False Claims Act. If that complaint can be believed, and there are 670 million reasons to give it credibility, Merck went about "increasing market share" as they call it, pretty much the way a drug pusher does. Only drug pushers don't get the US taxpayer to underwrite sales.
The complaint filed in Nevada district court outlines a scheme to defraud the taxpayer. Merck essentially gave away their drugs, drugs for chronic conditions, to hospitals so that patients would be dependent on the prescription when they left the hospital. Then Merck charged higher prices when the patient left. Only problem is that by discounting drug away earlier they were supposed to report that as the new price of the drug and re-imburse the government accordingly. Ooops. You can't say the pill is 10 cents in the hospital but costs 2 dollars when the patient leaves and get two dollars per pill from the government which pays the bills each time.
In a special irony, one of the drugs whose "market share" this scheme Improved was Vioxx. So now Merck has more Vioxx liability for that drug's cardiac problems than if they marketed the drug legally. That would almost be funny if it didn't put so many patients' lives at risks.
Anyway, the US Department of Justice is to be congratulated for winning such a huge settlement. The Lawyers who won the case and certainly the Plaintiff who brought it have all earned their reward. I just wish that instead of keeping everything quiet everybody would do a little more bragging. Get all the documents out of seal and tell the world that the False Claims Act works to recover funds stolen from the government even in complex schemes. Let's encourage the whistlebowers to report fraud as the False Claims Act was enacted to do. When you win $670 Million, its time to tell the world.
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