WASHINGTON – Thanks to a law championed
by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the federal government recovered
$5.6 billion lost to fraud in 2021 – the second largest yearly amount on record.
Whistleblowers, who Grassley has
fought for and protected throughout his tenure in the Senate, accounted for $1.6 billion of
those recoveries. Since it was modernized and strengthened by Grassley in 1986,
the
False Claims Act has now been responsible for more than
$70 billion in recoveries.
“The False
Claims Act is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s often difficult to
quantify the value of whistleblowers, but in this case, they have held the
government accountable and helped saved taxpayers over $70 billion.
Whistleblowers go out of their way to root out fraudulent and abusive uses of
your hard-earned tax dollars. They’re absolutely essential to fighting fraud,
and the Justice Department ought to continue empowering them to prevent
swindlers from getting away with defrauding American taxpayers,” Grassley said.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently
announced the recoveries in Fiscal Year 2021, crediting Grassley’s law as a key
tool for tackling fraud.
In 1986, Grassley led a successful effort
to update the False Claims Act, which
allows the government to recover taxpayer dollars from entities that defrauded
federal agencies. A key provision in that update, known as qui tam, allows whistleblowers to bring lawsuits against alleged
fraudsters on behalf of the government and share in any recoveries. The law has
been so successful that other agencies, such as the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC), have adopted similar programs that incentivize
whistleblowers who shine a light on fraud by allowing them to share in the
recoveries.
Despite the
False Claims Act’s overwhelming
success, courts and defendants are twisting a 2016 Supreme Court ruling to
mischaracterize and weaken the law. Grassley, a long-time advocate for
government oversight and accountability, has continued leveraging his senior position in
the Senate to root out fraud, waste and abuse, including by protecting and
strengthening the
False Claims Act. In July, Grassley led a bipartisan
group of senators in
introducing the
False Claims Amendments Act of 2021 to further beef up the
government’s most potent tool to fight fraud. He also
introduced the
Administrative
False Claims Act to update the law governing smaller, and potentially more
frequent, instances of fraud committed against the government. Both of Grassley’s
proposals passed the Judiciary Committee last November and now await a vote in
the full Senate.
More information on
False Claims Act
settlements and judgments from 2021 can be found on the DOJ’s website by
clicking
HERE.
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