The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has approved a record $30 million whistleblower award, it said Thursday.
The award was the result of information that helped the agency sanction JPMorgan Chase & Co. for failing to properly inform some wealthy clients about conflicts of interest behind its investment recommendations, according to an attorney involved in the matter.
The CFTC made the award public on Thursday without naming individuals or the bank.
According to the attorney, Edward Siedle, it was the culmination of a December 2015 settlement in which JPMorgan agreed to pay regulators a total of $367 million for failing to disclose that it was steering asset-management clients into investments that would be especially profitable to the bank.
That included $100 million that went to the CFTC — $40 million in penalties and $60 million in disgorgement.
The bank agreed to pay an additional $267 million at the time to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where a pair of preliminary whistle-blower awards totaling $61 million were authorized a year ago but still await final approval.
Aims to 'Incentivize Whistle-Blowers'
The CFTC's award is the fifth in the history of its program and eclipses a previous $10 million record announced in 2016. The latest award is also the CFTC's first since July 2016, when it announced it was paying approximately $50,000 to an unidentified recipient for providing original information that led to a successful enforcement action.
