Whistleblower

Whistleblower Suit Cites Rolls Plane Engine Flaws

Rolls-Royce Corp. concealed repeated defects at an aircraft engine plant in Indianapolis and fired a safety official for reporting the problems, according to a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court.

Lawyers for Thomas McArtor said a federal court in Indianapolis unsealed his complaint Tuesday, 34 months after it was filed. His lawyer criticized the long-running secrecy.

McArtor was a senior quality control official for Rolls-Royce and the Federal Aviation Administration's chief designated airworthiness representative for the plant, according to the complaint. It said he worked there for 12 years before being fired in 2007.

The suit says the company cut quality controls to increase profits, then concealed information about an increase in defects from customers.

It says problems affect the Model 250, T56 and AE2100 engines, used in civilian and military aircraft. They include Bell helicopters, Saab turbo props, C130 transports, and the Kiowa military helicopter.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12349267

interesting timing...

The suit says some engines from the plant have experienced 'catastrophic failures," including nine that have failed in Iraq, causing the loss of U.S. lives.

directly connected to qantas

Former WikiLeaks Members Form “Openleaks”


As WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange face mounting legal issues, key members of the project are reportedly jumping ship.

According to the Swedish news site DN.se, the new project, dubbed Openleaks, is going to launch Monday.

An insider told DN.se, “The two organizations are similar in that aspect that both are focusing on providing means for whistleblowers to anonymously provide the public with information.”

snip
Perhaps the most striking difference between the two projects, at least as we know them right now, is how information is actually disseminated. Rather than publishing documents directly, Openleaks instead seeks to be an intermediary between whistleblowers and other organizations.

An insider told DN.se:

“All editorial control and responsibility rests with the publishing organization. We will, as far as possible, take the role of the messenger between the whistleblower and the organization the whistleblower is trying to cooperate with.”

The source continued:

“As a result of our intention not to publish any document directly and in our own name, we do not expect to experience the kind of political pressure which WikiLeaks is under at this time. In that aspect, it is quite interesting to see how little of politicians’ anger seems directed at the newspapers using WikiLeaks sources.”

On the one hand, yes, simply acting as a broker of sensitive information may constitute less legal or political pressures for an organization. On the other hand, it raises important questions about what kinds of organizations are allowed to access the system and how that access is determined.

Openleaks can claim to be “without a political agenda,” but that doesn’t negate the fact that acting as a gatekeeper is in and of itself a political statement.

http://mashable.com/2010/12/10/openleaks/

new and improved...info has to get out there somehow
seeker and I can only do so much...LOL kidding

what about piss-weaks

seeker401 wrote:what about piss-weaks

LOL!

pretty sure assange is a shill

For Florida whistle-blowers, 2010 proved a productive and lucrative year

Florida whistle-blowers have had a most productive and lucrative year bringing corporate wrongdoing to light.

Just ask Sean J. Hellein, whose years of undercover work wearing a camera and a wire for 1,000 hours of recordings helped nail Tampa's WellCare Health Plans for Medicare reimbursement abuse.

WellCare agreed to a proposed $137.5 million settlement with the feds. Hellein, who was initially paid $35,000 a year by WellCare, stands to earn millions from the whistle-blower deal.

Debra Maul of Belleair Beach in Pinellas County was a senior sales representative when she blew the whistle on a Baltimore, Md., drug-testing firm called Ameritox. The company last month agreed to pay $16.3 million to settle a false-claims lawsuit contending it paid kickbacks to doctors to win their business. Maul is due $3.4 million.

Then there is an unusual company in Key West called Ven-A-Care. Somehow, over the past 20 years the four principals of that business have mastered the art of health care whistle-blowing.

Last week, they won their latest round of whistle-blowing against three drug companies when the Justice Department announced settlements with Abbott, Roxane Laboratories and B. Braun Medical worth $421 million.

That translates to a hefty $88.4 million whistle-blower award for the Ven-A-Care team. The Wall Street Journal calls the foursome the "bane of the drug industry" and estimates they've pulled in at least $214 million since 2000 on whistle-blower claims.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. The U.S. Justice Department last month said it has collected $3 billion in settlements this year with the help of whistle-blowers and a Civil War era law known as the False Claims Act. The act allows whistle-blowers to claim a share of any proceeds recovered by Uncle Sam.

Of the $3 billion, $2.5 billion came from the drug industry.

snip
Of course, Florida has a close history with a high-profile whistle-blower case that took place a decade ago.

On Dec. 14, 2000 — 10 years ago today — Columbia HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States, pleaded guilty to criminal conduct and agreed to pay more than $840 million in criminal fines, civil penalties and damages for unlawful billing practices.

Of that amount, $731.4 million was recovered under the False Claims Act.

The CEO in charge of Columbia HCA during the rise of those unlawful activities resigned under pressure from the hospital chain's board in 1997, while denying any knowledge of the billing practices. That executive was Rick Scott, who becomes Florida's governor next month.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/for-florida-whistle-blowers-2010-proved-a-productive-and-lucrative-year/1139839

A lot of whistleblowing news lately...bragging about the amounts recovered?...LOL doesnt come close to the amounts stolen...
whistleblowing is a means of informing the govt...period.

thats what it is..

Corporate America is No Fan of New Whistleblower Law

We’ve closely followed the whistleblower provisions in the new Dodd-Frank law, which promises potentially big payouts to people who provide tips about alleged fraud to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

You know who’s also been paying close attention to the new law? Corporate chieftains, and they’re none too happy about it.

More than 260 companies sent a letter to the SEC warning that the whistleblower provisions could turn financial fraud into a “gold mine” for employees, according to this WSJ article.

Whistleblowers, under Dodd-Frank, stand to earn rewards of 10% to 30% of fines and settlements reached as a result of their tips.

Lawyers at such companies as Delta, FedEx, Gap and Pfizer said the new rules could work against existing internal compliance programs, because they “disincent employees from looking for ways to improve or correct corporate behaviors, and incent them to find ways to profit from corporate wrongdoing,” according to the letter, which is due to be released today.

snip
“The proposals cut to the very core of what it is that every responsible U.S. company has been trying to do for the last couple of decades, which is to create effective, robust compliance reporting systems,” she said. “This just pulls the legs off the stool.”


http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/12/15/corporate-america-is-no-fan-of-new-whistleblower-law/

its all a game...greed will win, it always does. Info gathering...whistleblower beware you only get paid IF the enforcement action is over 2million...note :The SEC is delaying plans to set up the whistleblower office because of uncertainty over funding. I bet a lot of those enforcements are gonna come in JUST UNDER the minimum. Thanks for the info...sorry the amount didnt qualify you for a payout.
First the govt forces corps to have compliance procedures, encouraging employees to report problems internally first. NOW they want the employees to forget all that..and turn on the employer. Sounds to me like "compliance" left someone outta the loop. The need to know is the need to control.

WikiRebels
http://svtplay.se/v/2264028/wikirebels_the_documentary

referenced here

Hell hath no fury like an empire mocked
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LL16Ak02.html

wait for openleaks now

In power seat, Issa recasts self as Washington's whistleblower

Rep. Darrell Issa is finally getting what he has long craved: subpoena power. From his new perch atop the committee responsible for oversight investigations, the California Republican will be able to demand any document he wishes and summon anybody to appear before him - no small thing for a man who recently referred to President Obama as "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times."

Even so, there's one thing Issa says he won't subpoena: Barack Obama's birth certificate.

"Mine is not the committee that asks where the president was born," Issa said in an interview. "It doesn't ask what ministers that he went to think. All that stuff is a distraction. I'm not the overseer of the president."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/18/AR2010121803425.html


LOL course not!

distraction lol..the fact the president isnt american is just a distraction lol

Judge Says Fannie Mae Whistleblower’s Lawsuit Can Go Forward

As Congress begins to tackle the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-chartered mortgage giants that have been kept alive with $150 billion in taxpayer aid, a whistleblower lawsuit has been given the green light to proceed.

Caroline Herron, a former Fannie vice president who returned to the mortgage giant in 2009 as a high-level consultant, claims Fannie Mae executives bungled their key role in the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) foreclosure-prevention campaign, engaging in “mismanagement and gross waste of public funds.” A Center for Public Integrity story in August detailed her allegations that HAMP was marred by delays, missteps and executives preoccupied with their institution’s short-term financial interests.

Last Friday, the Treasury Department issued a widely-publicized report calling for a gradual winding down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Unnoticed was Herron’s important procedural victory on Thursday when U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer rejected Fannie’s request to dismiss the whistleblower case.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/blog/entry/2911/

debasement tool?

IRS pays Enron whistleblower $1.1 million


Before Enron was publicly exposed as a financial house of cards, a whistleblower tipped the Internal Revenue Service that the company was using abusive tax shelters to generate fictitious income, a law firm representing the informant said Tuesday.

Now, more than a decade later, the IRS has paid that whistleblower a $1.1 million reward, the law firm said.

“If the IRS had pursued this information in 1999 when my client first informed them of these abusive tax shelters, the government might have realized the depth of Enron’s problems and perhaps taken steps that might have helped avoid a total meltdown,” lawyer Erika A. Kelton of the Washington firm Phillips & Cohen said in a news release.

The alleged tax fraud allowed Enron to evade taxes on more than $600 million in income and to report more than $300 million of bogus profit, the firm said.

Enron sought bankruptcy protection in 2001 in one of the nation’s biggest financial scandals. Its implosion took a heavy toll on investors.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/irs-pays-enron-whistleblower-11-million/2011/03/15/ABFLAEb_story.html

“If the IRS had pursued this information in 1999 when my client first informed them of these abusive tax shelters, the government might have realized the depth of Enron’s problems and perhaps taken steps that might have helped avoid a total meltdown,” LOL duh.