The Securities and Exchange Commission awarded a whistleblower more than $2.2 million to a former company insider whose tips helped the agency open an investigation that led to an enforcement action. The whistleblower first reported the information to another federal agency and later provided the same information to the SEC.

The award is the first to be paid under the “safe harbor” of Exchange Act Rule 21F-4(b)(7), which provides that if a whistleblower submits information to another federal agency and submits the same information to the SEC within 120 days, then the SEC will treat the information as though it had been submitted to the SEC at the same time that it was submitted to the other agency.

Jaclyn Jaeger is a freelance contributor to Compliance Week after working for the company for 15 years. She writes on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal,...