Whistleblowers — A Legitimate Role in Corporate Life?

Abstract

The repercussions for the exposed whistleblowing employee are not always as drastic as those for Stanley Adams or Karen Silkwood. Adams, an ex‐senior executive at Hoffman‐La Roche in Switzerland who, in 1973, reported his employer to the European Commissioner for Competition over the involvement of the company in anti‐competitive practices, suffered a series of dreadful consequences, including imprisonment as a punishment for the crime of ‘economic espionage’, contrary to the Swiss Penal Code. More recently, a police investigation has begun into the death, in July 1991, of Paul Scully, an ex‐copper broker at the American company DLT, who had attempted to blow the whistle on suspicious trading in the copper markets.