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The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which the USA has sought to hold the leading banks to account for the financial crisis and to asses the validity of the methods used. This is the first of two articles which looks at the basis of the Complaints against the banks and the settlements which led to the imposition of large fines on the banks.

The paper first provides an account of the government housing policy from 1995 to 2008 and argues that the cases brought against the banks and then at the legal basis of the charges. The methodology consists of a careful examination of the documentary evidence and an analysis of the changes in the relevant laws used by the Department of Justice when bringing charges against the banks.

The paper concludes that both the basis of the cases against the banks and the purpose of large fines are open to question.

Much of the information is available. However, as the major cases against the large banks did not go the court, and the basis of the fines is a settlement between the bank and the Department of Justice, each fine is supported by a relatively brief “Statement of the Facts”. The evidence amassed by subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice is not tested in court.

Much greater consideration must be given to more effective ways of holding banks and especially senior executives to account.

The imposition of large fines does not satisfy the public desire to see that justice is done. Such fines imposed on the ban are not likely to change bank behaviour.

Its originality lies in setting out an account of government housing policy and its role in the run-up to the financial crisis. No one has carried out a careful analysis of the cases against the large banks brought by the Department of Justice and, in the second article, by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

With the increasing prevalence of awards for reporting fraudulent activity, it is important to learn if there are unintended consequences associated with the language offering such awards. Aside from issues regarding submitting unsubstantiated claims of fraud to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Section 922 of the Dodd–Frank Act may inadvertently encourage would-be whistleblowers to delay reporting fraud. Potential whistleblowers may choose to delay reporting due to the consideration of alternatives to external reporting, in a misguided attempt to increase the size of an award, or due to their ethical stance on the issues. Using a three-stage mixed methods (experiment, open-ended interviews, and experiment) approach, this study provides evidence that increased knowledge of statutes involving external whistleblowing may result in reporting delays. The data suggest that despite statements from the SEC forbidding this, managers may choose to delay reporting when under the threshold necessary to receive an award. In such a manner, managers may be allowing the fraud to grow to a necessary perceived level over time. As might be expected, the accountants in this study were more cautious, checking to see if internal reporting worked first. Of particular note, 16 individuals indicated that they would never report, with the motivation apparently driven by fear of job loss and/or retaliation. Lastly, the intention to delay or speed up reporting may be very different based on the perception of ethics involved in the decision.

The aim of this paper is to outline key social marketing issues apparent in deceptive weight‐loss advertising, from the perspective of government policy‐makers, manufacturers, the media, and consumers. The purpose is to examine the complexity of one aspect of the obesity battle and provide a framework for coordinated and integrated social marketing initiatives from a multiple stakeholder perspective.

The results of deceptive weight‐loss advertising are framed using the harm chain model, and the paper offers recommended solutions based on a framework of marketing, education and policy changes across the network of stakeholders.

This paper concludes that a resolution to the harm created by deceptive weight‐loss advertising can be achieved by the creation of a more holistic, system‐wide solution to this important health and policy issue. This networked approach must involve all aspects of harm in a multi‐stakeholder solution, including both upstream and downstream integration. Specific recommendations are made for policy‐makers, manufacturers, the media, and consumers to achieve this goal.

From a marketing perspective, analyzing the issue of deceptive weight‐loss advertising using the harm chain allows for the creation of a more holistic, system‐wide solution involving stakeholders in all aspects of harm for this important health and policy issue.

This research examines the problem of obesity and weight‐loss advertising from the unique perspective of the harm chain framework. The authors make unified recommendations for various stakeholders including industry, media, government and consumers, in order to direct integrated social marketing and consumer‐oriented strategies within this industry.

The various forms of retribution that whistle blowers endure, at the hands of their employers, both financially and psychologically for having attempted to correct mismanagement, fraud, and dishonesty are often times too much for the whistle blower to bear (Glazer and Glazer, 1986, August). Careers are put into jeopardy because individuals with strong ethics decide to pursue lawsuits against their employer. For instance, US Forest Service employees have found their careers ruined through either demotions or loss of job when caught speaking out in favour of the environment or sound science, or when simply obeying the law (Schneider, 1991, July/August).

Fighting wrongdoing through whistleblowing is on the horizon. This year a whistleblower protection bill was introduced in Parliament, the media have prominently featured incidents where failure of whistleblowing has occurred, and prominent UK scholars and leaders have endorsed it. The USA was at this same juncture 10–15 years ago, when many felt the large institutions in US society were beyond effective control. Whistleblowers were seen as a vanguard which could directly correct wrong‐doing and indirectly facilitate organisational ‘right‐doing’. Early reporting of wrongdoing by organisation insiders who had good evidence would lead to more expedient and less expensive correction of the problem. Encouraging whistle‐blowing would also indirectly deter wrongdoing because those considering wrongdoing would know fellow employees were watching and willing to talk. The resulting state legislation, enacted by three‐quarters of the states, is similar to the proposed UK legislation in many important respects.

Few new laws in recent years have inspired as much attention as the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (Act). The procedural and substantive requirements of the Act have, and will continue to have, far reaching impact on and implications for all issuers of securities and their officers, directors, and other controlling persons. However, for employers who are participants in the financial services industry (such as broker‐dealers, investment advisors, fund advisors and managers, and others), the Act raises an unintended and untoward consequence, which appears to have passed under the radar screens of most commentators.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the motivation behind whistleblowing, the tussle between internal and external whistleblowing and the extent whistleblowing laws in the UK and the USA are able to provide protection to whistleblowers. While employees need to be protected against unfair retaliations for making legitimate disclosure, employers seek to prevent irreparable damage from abusive disclosure of sensitive corporate information.

A mix of legal examination and case study analysis of recent whistleblowing cases in the financial services sector is used in this study. It ergo relies mainly on primary data from recent applicable legislations and secondary data available in the public domain, journal articles, media reports and related academic texts.

The study’s findings and analysis suggest that whistleblowing law in the UK, namely, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 appears unable to promote effective whistleblowing awareness among working adults and adequate protection to whistleblowers. The situation is broadly similar in the USA with reports of serious employer retaliations though bounty awards available there have brought some relief to whistleblowers. Consequently, whistleblowing to help safeguard public interest is not appropriately encouraged and protected, suggesting the need for further reform initiatives.

The research mitigates the limits of primary secondary data analysis through triangulation of different sources of data and from the use of different perspectives. This paper suggests that whistleblowing laws in the UK and the USA, while assuring protection for workers for reporting wrongdoings internally or externally to prescribed regulatory agencies, can in theory help the early detection of corporate wrongdoings like those witnessed in the 2007 global financial crisis as employees are likely to first witness such activities. In practice, because of fear of employer reprisals and other social and economic costs, whistleblowers frequently hesitated until way too late. The findings suggest that business corporations missed such occasions to beef up their internal controls and demonstration of their commitment to ethical governance; and ergo would need to address such issues more effectively.

The paper contributes insights from a combined corporate management and legal analysis perspective. It suggests that this type of approach and analysis of whistleblowing would be helpful to employers, employees, policymakers and regulators, as whistleblowing is a complex process involving not just the law, but social, psychological and economic considerations. The paper, by providing further insights on the motivations behind whistleblowing including other considerations as well as the impact of current whistleblowing laws in the UK and the USA, supports earlier suggestions on the lack of whistleblowing contributions to various current financial scandals until way too late and the need to review these laws and current internal corporate controls reporting practices.

With sanctions becoming an increasingly important tool in ostracising autocratic regimes from western markets, the need for effective enforcement of sanctions and anti-money laundering (AML) is increasing, and the global AML regime will be the backbone to detecting evasion of sanctions. This regime, however, has been widely criticised as ineffective. This paper aims to discuss issues with the current sanctions/AML regime and propose a reward scheme for whistleblowers to enable asset seizures that is not reliant on its effectiveness.

This paper reviews weaknesses in the global AML regime, provide suggestions on how to design whistleblower reward programmes, based on agency experience and empirical evidence, as well as elaborate on how to use such programmes in the AML context.

This study concludes that for reward programmes to be effective in the context of AML and sanctions enforcement, they need to include witness protection and leniency for money launderers, though not for those convicted of a criminal offence associated with the predicate crime. Moreover, rewards should be mandatory and scale with the amount of money seized or confiscated, and the cap on monetary rewards should be higher than it is under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Rewards Programme in the USA.

In contrast to how the USA went about implementing rewards in this area under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Rewards Programme, this study argues that these programmes should be designed differently. This study also provides novel advice to governments on different design dimensions in the AML context and a model with three crucial pillars along with other design dimensions that should be considered.