This bill offers incentives to employees at car manufacturing companies, part suppliers, car contractors, and dealership agencies to report instances of vehicle defects or violations to federal regulators. Essentially, it aims to protect and reward whistleblowers in the auto industry.
The bill would safeguard a whistleblowers’ personal information, and offer them up to 30 percent of the fines larger than $1 million collected from offending companies. The bill would prevent any rewards from being given to a whistleblower who falsely exchanges information or fabricates their information, with criminal penalties to follow.
The benefits and protections in this bill have been based on existing whistleblower guidelines for people who have shared valuable information with the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the past.