Cal. Assembly passed bill (SB-783) that would punish corporate of...
Cal. Assembly passed bill (SB-783) that would punish corporate officials who knew about financial misdeeds such as WorldCom’s financial misstatements but kept silent about them. Bill was returned to Senate for concurrence with many changes Assembly made, including turning…
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measure into pure whistleblower act by stripping out sections that dealt with crime lab funding. As passed by Assembly, bill would make directors, executives and upper level managers with finance responsibility personally liable for fines of up to $100,000 for covering up accounting fraud. It would impose fine of up to $1 million on corporations that withheld or concealed information about financial fraud. It also would expand legal protections for employees who blew whistle on illegal financial activity or other unlawful conduct at their company by making employer or supervisor who retaliated against whistleblower personally liable for fine up to $10,000. It would require Attorney Gen. to establish whistleblower hotline for confidential tips about unlawful corporate conduct. Meanwhile, resolution introduced in Cal. Assembly (HR-92) would encourage Cal. telephone companies to give hiring preference to Cal. residents. Resolution says that in face of state’s poor economic climate and high unemployment rate, state’s telecom carriers should employ Californians in preference to employment of non-Californians.