Editorial

In yet another health care fraud case involving Dallas-based hospital owner/operator, Tenet Healthcare Corp., the company announced it has agreed to pay the United States $513.8 million to resolve long-running civil and criminal allegations that it paid illegal kickbacks for referrals of pregnant, undocumented Hispanic women.

Former hospital chief financial officer, Ralph Williams, filed the 2009 whistleblower claim (qui tam lawsuit) that led to the government investigation. He was fired that same year.

If you think you’ve heard this story before, you probably have. Tenet Healthcare is a serial offender with a reprehensible history of alleged health care fraud. The company has twice set the record for largest hospital fraud settlements. In 1994, Tenet paid $380 million in the U.S. Justice Department’s largest settlement in history at that time....

Not long after a recent study highlighted some of the workings of whistleblower fear and risk perception, the anonymous source who brought us the Panama Papers has released a statement that sheds new light on the quest of whistleblowers all over the world.

Panama Papers’ John Doe Wasn’t in it for the Money

Judging from the document, the person responsible for the Panama Papers leak was not after fame or money, but rather in a quest for truth and political transparency. The statement was published on the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which was also home to the original reporting on the leak....

When trying to make a point, Michael Volkov’s new book A Return to Common Sense resorts to statistics rather than to unsubstantiated opinions. When the author discusses the trend of Deferred- and Non-Prosecution Agreements in criminal cases of corporations, he has plenty of examples to back up his views; roughly half of all criminal cases are resolved with a DPA or an NPA each year.

Likewise, the author has a wealth of serious violations by top corporations to list when it comes to adding a name to those DPAs and NPAs. From government bribery to mortgage fraud and tax evasion, and virtually every corporate crime under the sun, it would seem that DPAs and NPAs can solve it all, or can’t they?...