WHISTLE AT WORK

Billboards urge Street employees to report fraud

The NYPD asks if you see something, say something. And now a band of Wall Street gadflies are similarly seeking help in sniffing out weapons of financial destruction.

The financial industry requests hit New York like a thunderbolt last week, announced by inyourface billboards across downtown Manhattan advertising an encrypted new way bank employees can electronically and anonymously disclose sensitive statements and documents on suspected workplace fraud.

The aim is to help level the playing field on Wall Street between getrichquick shady operators and the ofteninnocent workers, according to a grassroots coalition of workers. Behind this campaign urging bank employees to blow the whistle in an intensified clampdown on suspected corruption are advocates and lawyers.

While its aim is to rein in corruption of the subprime kind that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, it does have an unemphasized monetary incentive. The regulators sometimes dip into deep pockets when money is collected as a result of whistleblower tips. The Securities and Exchange Commission awards successful tipsters as much as 10 to 30 percent of the loot collected.

And by all accounts, there may be more money to collect.

“Frankly, every time you turn around, we have something coming up. There is no telling what is out there,” whistleblower Richard Bowen, the former chief underwriter for Citigroup who served at the bank during the housingbubble financial meltdown, told The Post.

“Of course you have checks and balances and controls today. But they had all those, too, during the financial crisis. I am convinced the large banks have done a tremendous amount of harm to this country — and we need to wake the public up,” Bowen said.

Now an accounting professor, Bowen is one of the most highprofile public figures throwing his weight behind the loud nationwide campaign, dubbed Whistleblow Wall Street (#WBWS), launched close on the heels of the Oct. 3 seventh anniversary of TARP, the $700 billion financial crisis bank bailout of 2008.

“If You See Something, Do Some thing,” scream the billboards, which will be visible, organizers say, until the end of October from Exchange Place in lower Manhattan north to Greenwich Street. They also tout the campaign’s Web site, WhistleBlowWallStreet.com.

“It is too easy for employees to witness bank behavior that is harmful to customers or others and not say anything, due to fear or a misplaced sense of company loyalty,” Bowen said. “Please, say something! Show personal integrity and report behavior that may be harming others.”

The organizers have downplayed the potential payouts for whistleblowers, emphasizing justice must be done. Whistleblowers like Bowen and former Countrywide executive Michael Winston were some of Wall Street’s top brass to report wrongdoing at their banks.

This latest campaign casts a wider net, from the boardroom to the mailroom clerk. But one bank analyst is not buying it.

Dick Bove of Rafferty Capital Markets likens the campaign to a continuation of the sameold since the financial crisis: a Staliniststyle witch hunt. Costcutting banks are in a vulnerable spot, he warned.

“If a bank employee is correct and turns up a problem, he can make a few million bucks,” Bove said. “The banking industry is ripe at present for unsettled people to react in this environment. Basically, the failure to generate enough new revenues is pressing down hard on bank costs. And the most effective way to deal with this is by firing people.”

But organizers at Whistleblow Wall Street say the campaign is not driven by extremist ideology or whistleblower payouts. The savingsandloan scandals of the 1980s resulted in more than 1,000 prosecutions, and as many as 800 bankers were jailed, they note.

The fallout from the 2008 financial crisis is different so far — an estimated $160 billion in fines and penalties on banks and global financial institutions. But critics gripe that bankers at the center of the financial crisis have escaped jail time. “This is pathetic,” said Bowen. “I am definitely in favor of putting people in jail who have broken the law,” agreed Bove.