If you know anything about the Panama Papers, you could have a pretty lucrative summer.
If you fancy moonlighting as a whistleblower, the Ontario Securities Commission will be setting up office later this year and providing pay-outs as high as $5 million on good tips.
The program will provide whistleblowers with payments of five to 15 per cent of the total fines imposed (at least $1 million) in a case if the OSC is able to successfully prosecute based on info you supply.
The maximum these payments can reach is $5 million in cases where the OSC collect penalties that exceed $10 million.
Although the chair of the OSC, Maureen Jensen, does not expect to get as many calls as the U.S securities and Exchange Commission – which got 3,600 tips in 2014 – she believes that there is significant interest in exposing securities crimes.
“As soon as we mentioned we were going to have a whistle-blower program, we started getting people calling,” she said.
The program will hope to unveil complex cases that may never have come to light without a whistle-blower office to facilitate.
“The Panama Papers really show that whistleblowers are important,” said Jensen. “That’s what this person was, a whistle-blower, and obviously they felt there was something going on that they really wanted the world to know about, and they felt it was wrong.”
The program should get approval in June and people with tips will be able to remain remain anonymous. They may even be able to work through their cases with lawyers and not disclose their identities.
And if you ain’t no snitch, it’s probably a very good time to become one.
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