The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Thursday announced a record bonus of nearly $200m to a whistleblower who provided information on a case involving the manipulation of key financial benchmarks. This is the largest bonus in history for whistleblower schemes of all government agencies in the United States.
Kirby McInerney LLP, the law firm representing the whistleblower, said in a statement that its clients received record bonuses for providing a wealth of information and documents in 2012 to "facilitate" an investigation into indicator manipulation by CFTC and a foreign regulator.
In its statement, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not disclose the identity of the whistleblower, or the details of the case or the exact number of bonuses.
It is speculated that the case may be related to Deutsche Bank, as it was reported in May that a former Deutsche executive was expected to receive a huge bonus for the settlement of the $2.5 billion London interbank offered rate (Libor) manipulation, but CFTC's whistleblower plan was at risk because the bonus was too large.
However, Congress recently passed a bill to maintain CFTC's whistleblower program.