December 14, 2010
Dear Senators,
Auditors and Compliance professionals are the company employees best trained and in the best position to detect fraud. It is not uncommon that they get retaliated when uncovering fraud and in several cases they are forced to resign or settle a termination agreements.
Sometimes they settle and are forced to sign a release saying that they did not see any "wrong doing" during their tenure as auditors/compliance professionals, this practice on forcing a termination with an agreement that there was not wrong doing on itself is a red flag.
Also, chief compliance officers although they have open channels of communications to the board of directors they are forced to dismiss or hide wrongful activities as they are victims of top executives coercion.
Additionally, several auditors and compliance professional often go on physiological stress leave because they have been harassed by their employer to not disclose fraud. You can validate this fact by getting input from psychiatric doctors.
The spirit of the law is to increase transparency and by excluding auditors and compliance professional from the whistleblower provision you will be contributing to the opposite. It is what the "crooks" want, the 'crooks" think like this " Yes dear lawmakers please exclude the most qualified employees from the provision and we can continue with our fraud since none else will be independent and/or trained to detect our wrong behavior, Yes Yes Thank you ."
I sincerely urge you to not exclude auditor and compliance professionals from this provision, as well as consider a special provision for retaliation and to make illegal to force any employee to sign a release that they saw "no wrong doing" when terminated releases.
With much appreciation,
Mark