Blowing the Whistle on How Insider Tips Are Handled: SEC Roundup

Welcome to SEC Roundup, a bimonthly video series by Paul Hastings partners and former Securities and Exchange Commission senior trial counsels Nick Morgan and Tom Zaccaro exploring current SEC topics with thought leaders and industry experts.

In this episode, Morgan and Zaccaro talk with Alex Platt, professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, who discusses his recent paper on the flaws in the SEC’s Whistleblower Program. Until his paper, Platt says, ”the tip-sifting process has been entirely shrouded in secrecy.”

The SEC, Platt found, outsources the job of sifting through the flood of whistleblower tips it receives each year — about 12,000 — to a “very concentrated group of well-connected attorneys and law firms,” which “raises the prospect that this [SEC whistleblower] program may not be completely operating in the public interest.”

These private whistleblower lawyers, Platt states in his paper, “operate free from virtually all public accountability, transparency, or regulation.”

See the video above for the discussion with Platt.