The Regulator itself issued the amount of the award to a whistleblower for having providing it with information. Why is that? One would usually take a lower profile when awarding this much money ($17m) to an informer… Conversely, the Regulator immediately and publicly announced it in a press release, which pretty looked like a tender offer for further denunciations. It even included a link for everyone to access the whistleblower program—which is easily funded, since the awards are charged on the fines imposed on the convicted operators thanks to the information given.
The reason for this is that information from whistleblowers is not merely indicative, nor a second-best option; it is central to Regulation, since it leads the Regulator to get information people within the system (i.e., insiders) deliberately chooses to ‘blow’ (in fact, not only do informers blow the whistle—they often immediately provide the Regulator with substantial information).
The press release includes justifications for the Regulator’s behaviour, as the SEC openly considers that rewarding whistleblowers is the most efficient way for the Regulator to open or to resolve investigations. The Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement stated indeed that “company insiders are uniquely positioned to protect investors and blow the whistle on a company’s wrongdoing by providing key information to the SEC so we can investigate the full extent of the violations”.
This highlights the ambivalence of insiders. Accordingly, they need to be ‘inside’ the system to be ‘knowledgeable’ and, consequently, obtain privileged information. On the one hand, should they use this information for themselves, then they would face prosecution for market abuse; on the other hand, however, if they use it to stir up the Regulator and shift its attention towards the whistle they’re blowing, then they may earn just as much money, if not more, than if they had behaved in a way that would have led them to prison.
The stage is thus set for the "business of virtue" to thrive.
The Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht - BaFin (the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) issued on Tuesday May 18th 2010 three decrees prohibiting temporarily naked short selling. These decisions are effective from May 19th 2010 until March 31th 2011. They will be regularly assessed and can be lifted during this period.
FRENCH
La Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht - BaFin (l’autorité allemande de surveillance des marchés financiers) a interdit par trois décrets publié le 18 mai 2010 la vente à découvert à nu et les CDS du 19 mai 2010 au 31 mars 2011.
La Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht - BaFin (l’autorité allemande de surveillance des marchés financiers) a publié mardi 18 mai 2010 trois décrets interdisant temporairement la vente à découvert à nu. Ces décrets prennent effet le 19 mai 2010 et durent jusqu’au 31 mars 2011. Ils seront régulièrement évalués et pourront être levés à n’importe quel moment durant cette période.
GERMAN
Die Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht - BaFin hat am 18. Mai 2010 die ungedeckte Leerverkäufe und ungedeckte CDS auf Staatsanleihen der Eurozone untersagt.
Die BaFin hat drei Anordnungen am 18. Mai 2010 herausgegeben. Sie untersagen die ungedeckte Leerverkäufe von Schuldtiteln von Staaten der Eurozone, die an einer inländischen Börse zum Handel im regulierten Markt zugelassen sind, so wie ungedeckte CDS. Diese Verbote gelten vom 19. Mai 2010 bis zum 31. März 2011 und werden laufend überprüft.
SPANISH
La Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – BaFin (la Autoridad Supervisora de Finanza Federal Alemana) prohíbe las ventas de cortos al descubierto y los CDS a través de tres decretos que se aplicarán entre el 19 de mayo 2010 hasta el 31 de marzo 2011.
La Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – BaFin (la Autoridad Supervisora de Finanza Federal Alemana) publicó tres decretos el 18 de mayo del 2010 prohibiendo temporalmente la vena de cortos al descubierto. Estas decisiones serán efectivas desde el 19 de mayo 2010 hasta el 31 de marzo 2011. Serán asesoradas regularmente y podrán ser desmanteladas en cualquier instante durante este periodo.
CHINESE
Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht - (BaFin：德国金融市场监管机构)于2010年5月18日出台三项法令，规定在2010年5月9日至2011年3月31日期间内禁止“裸卖空”和信贷违约掉期行为。
Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht - (BaFin：德国金融市场监管机构)于2010年5月18日出台三项法令暂时禁止“裸卖空”行为。这些法令将于2010年5月9日至2011年3月31日内生效。它们将被定期评估并且可能在上述期限的任何时间被撤销。
The Internet has created an area of freedom, even libertarian space.
The flood of words is sometimes hateful. Never mind. This would be the price of freedom: it corresponds to the project of those who conceived the Internet, the places of expression and creation, even the worst, and the political and legal culture of the United States, a system in which the freedom of expression has constitutional value.
This in particular allows for the development of ideas spreading so-called "neo-Nazi" thinking, as the Stormfront site has been doing for years.
The host also banned the web master from rebuilding the site or transferring it in any way.
This case gives rise to a debate on the rise of extremists in the United States on the one hand and the limit of freedom of expression on the other.
What is here to be noted is the power of a web host in the matter.
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At first glance, a private company does not have to make the police, let alone morality, and to remove the use of a domain name, that is to "kill" a site. But it must be taken into account that three years had passed and that this site, the basis of future events of KKK, prospered.
The manager who made the decision found it necessary to justify himself, as a Regulatory Authority would have done, giving grounds for a sanction decision, even though he can avail himself of the general conditions of use that are accepted by the entities that create and operate the sites.
Regulation Law, in order to recognize and draw the consequences from the specificities of some objects, has been build, at the start, around the notion of "technical sector" although their delimitation is partially related to a political choice. But, in facts, there are multiple points of contacts between sectors, actors moving from one to another as objects. The regulatory solution is so to climb over some technical borders through the methodology of interregulation which is by the way the only one to enable the regulation of some phenomena going beyond the notion of sector and related to Compliance Law.
This news takes the exemple of companies furnishing new payment services. In order to they can provide these services, these firms needs to access to banking accounts of concerned people and so to very sensitive personal data. Regulation of such a configuration needs a cooperation between the banking regulator and the personal data regulator. Legislation being not sufficient to organize in Ex Ante this interregulation, the European Data Protection Board has published some guidelines on 17th of July 2020 about the way it conceives the articulation between the PSD2 (European directive about payment services) and GDPR and has announced that it intended to expand the circle of its interlocutors to do this interregulation. Such an initiative from EDPB can be justified by the uncertainty about how interpreting both texts and articulating them.
On April 27, 2010, the European Parliament’s Committee for Health voted to introduce an amendment to the European Commission’s ‘Pharmacovigilance and Prescription Medicine Package’, which would introduce a strict regime for online prescription medicine sellers.
Procedure is that by which a body of law finds its unity: the right to an impartial tribunal, as stated in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, created a new unit in Regulation Law, as it also requires from Regulatory Authorities to "show" their impartiality whenever they act as courts.
Nevertheless, little by little, the national courts and the ECHR itself indicated the contours of this right, which cannot, admittedly, end up nullifying the effectiveness of the mission of Regulators.
It is assumed that whenever a Regulatory Authority intervenes whether in "civil matters", i.e., when it affects the civil rights or the property rights of a person, or in "criminal matters", i.e., when it sanctions a significantly serious behavior, the individuals that are exposed to the power of the Regulator are protected against it by the right to impartiality. Since the regulator has the power to judge, it also has to respond to the condition of impartiality.
As such, not only those within the Regulatory Authority involved should not be in conflict of interest or have already experienced the event (personal, subjective and/or objective impartiality), but the Authority in its organization and processes itself shall give to see its impartiality to the person who is threatened by its power- and, beyond, to the entire society. This objective structural impartiality is called after English law "apparent impartiality."
The Journal of Regulation’s annual symposium on March 17, 2011 examined the theme of Neutrality in systems of economic regulation. After preliminaries on the definition of neutrality and neutral action, which were the common theme linking all speakers’ contributions, the first part of the colloquium explored the general aspects of neutrality in regulated industries, such as the neutrality of standards or the relationship between neutrality and legal categories, impact studies, or procedural techniques. The second part of this event raised more specific points, such as the interference between neutrality and the globalization of regulated industries, the question of regulators’ neutrality, and of net neutrality that some regulators wish to raise to the level of a general principle.
SPANISH
Informe bibliográfico (Simposio): La neutralidad en los sistemas de regulación económica
El simposio anual de la Revista de Regulación que se llevó a cabo el 17 de marzo del 2011 examinó el tema de Neutralidad en sistemas económicos de regulación. Después de algunos preliminares sobre la definición de la neutralidad y la acción neutral, los cuales fueron temas comunes en las contribuciones de los diferentes actores presentes, la primera parte del coloquio exploró los aspectos generales de la neutralidad en las industrias reguladas, como la neutralidad de los estándares o la relación entre la neutralidad y las categorías legales, estudios de impacto, o técnicas de procedimiento. La segunda parte del evento alzó cuestiones específicas, como la interferencia entra la neutralidad y la globalización de industrias reguladas, la cuestión de la neutralidad de diferentes reguladores y la neutralidad de la red, lo cual algunos quieren alzar a nivel de principio general.
