Whistleblowers

Across the table at one of Washington’s classic power restaurants, my source sat smiling. We hadn’t seen each other for more than six years. After the usual opening small talk and pleasantries, I had just posed the question I had come to dinner to ask.

“I’m curious. Why did you go cold on me all these years?” I inquired.

“You were too hot,” the source shot back wryly, playing off my own words. “Honestly, we were concerned that after your phone records and mail was seized that you were still being monitored.”

The source paused.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A recently unsealed whistle-blower lawsuit claims a former civilian Navy employee from Virginia and a now-defunct Navy contractor engaged in a bribery and kickback scheme going back to at least 2004.

The lawsuit, first filed in a federal court in Georgia in 2006, predates by more than four years criminal charges brought by federal prosecutors in Rhode Island in 2011 that allege a similar scheme by some of the same people cost the government $10 million.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Thursday it will not try again to sue a watchdog group that shared money from a whistleblower settlement with a government economist more than 14 years ago, following a mistrial in the case last month.

The department told U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of its decision at a hearing on Thursday. In December, a judge filling in for Bates declared a mistrial when the eight jurors in the civil case failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday awarded $104 million to a whistleblower who helped expose illegal tax havens at Swiss banks.

“Today is a great day for tax fairness.  Today is a terrible day for big-time tax cheats,” said Dean Zerbe, a lawyer with the National Whistleblowers Center.