Many international whistleblowers labor under the false impression that they must be American or work in the U.S. to be eligible to participate in the various U.S. whistleblower reward programs. Whistleblower Partners attorneys Mary Inman and Ari Yampolsky spoke with Welt reporter Laurin Meyer to disabuse Welt readers of this notion and discuss the risks posed to the German auto industry by the extraterritorial reach of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Whistleblower Reward program.

Under the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act, which is run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), auto industry insiders who confidentially provide information about safety lapses in vehicles to the Secretary of the Department of Transportation can receive between 10 and 30 percent of any monetary sanctions above $1 million that the government collects based on the information they provide. As Mary and Ari informed Laurin, those auto-safety whistleblowers can come from anywhere in the world so long as the vehicles or components with the safety issues that they seek to expose make their way into the U.S. market.

To illustrate this point, Mary and Ari introduced Laurin to our successful auto-safety whistleblower client Gwang Ho Kim, a former Hyundai engineer working in Hyundai’s and Kia’s plant in South Korea who exposed their efforts to conceal a design flaw that put engines in millions of cars at risk of catching fire. Although he is South Korean and the misconduct took place there, Mr. Kim received a $24.3 million whistleblower reward from NHTSA under the DOT’s Auto Safety Whistleblower Program for providing information that NHTSA used to impose a $210 million fine, thereby helping to protect the U.S. driving public.

Given the global nature of the auto manufacturing industry today, with cars and car parts now made in places as far flung as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, South Africa, Mexico, Canada and Eastern Europe in addition to the U.S., it makes good sense that U.S. whistleblower reward programs take a global view and seek to enlist the help of whistleblowers by meeting them where they are, which in the case of auto-industry insiders often means rolling out the welcome mat for whistleblowers located abroad. With apologies to American poet Emma Lazarus, when it comes to auto safety, the words emblazoned at the base of the Statute of Liberty should be read to say “Send us your tired, your poor, your whistleblowers.”

Laurin Meyer’s article, which quotes Mary and Ari and features our whistleblower client Gwang Ho Kim, can be read here.