Robert Khuzami

Corporate whistleblowers could score multimillion-dollar payouts for reporting financial wrongdoing under a new program approved by U.S. securities regulators Wednesday. A divided U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted 3 to 2 to finalize the measure that has grown into one of the most contentious requirements of last year's Dodd-Frank Wall Street overhaul law. Tipsters would be paid 10% to 30% of sanctions of $1 million or more for original and useful information. Companies from Google Inc. to JPMorgan Chase & Co. have expressed fears the whistleblower rule will undermine internal compliance programs at public companies by encouraging employees to go directly to the SEC. The rule does not require whistleblowers to first, or simultaneously, report problems internally, as companies had sought.

Former American International Group Inc. Chief Executive Maurice "Hank" Greenberg has agreed to pay $15 million to settle allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he oversaw numerous improper accounting deals that for years deceptively inflated the insurance giant's bottom line.

The Securities and Exchange Commission named six people Wednesday to lead new investigative units as the agency reorganizes its enforcement efforts. The SEC was scorched by its failure to detect the stunning, long-running fraud by money manager Bernard Madoff despite numerous red flags and credible warnings. The new units and their leaders are: asset management, headed by Bruce Karpati and Robert Kaplan; market abuse, led by Daniel Hawke; structured and new products, Kenneth Lench; foreign corrupt practices, Cheryl Scarboro; and municipal securities and public pensions, Elaine Greenberg.

Opening a new front in the search for mortgage-related fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday accused a manager of so-called collateralized debt obligations of cheating clients as the market for those securities began to unravel in 2007. The case, filed against New York-based ICP Asset Management and its principal, Thomas C. Priore, is the SEC's first against a manager of complex CDOs — investment pools that were the receptacles of many of the bonds backed by bad mortgages issued at the height of the housing boom.

UPDATE : In full ruling, SEC wins partial victory :  The federal government has lost another high-profile case resulting from the global financial crisis. A federal jury Monday cleared the managers of the Reserve Fund money-market fund of civil fraud charges, according to news reports . The Securities and Exchange Commission had accused Bruce Bent Sr., who created the first money-market fund and is a legend on Wall Street, and his son, Bruce Bent II, of deceiving investors about the riskiness of the fund.

Federal regulators sued Irvine brokerage Brookstreet Securities Corp. and its founder Tuesday, accusing them of systematically selling high-risk mortgage securities to customers with conservative investment goals. Brookstreet and its chief executive, Stanley C. Brooks, allegedly developed a program that offered the mortgage investments to more than 1,000 retirees and others for whom they were unsuitable, according to the lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Through his attorney, Brooks denied wrongdoing and said he would contest the allegations.

The Obama administration's new effort to investigate the causes of the nation's mortgage meltdown will focus on coordinating the often overlapping state and federal investigations and on holding accountable those whose misconduct led to the global financial crisis. A team of 55 attorneys, agents and analysts will be assembled quickly to try to speed up existing probes and launch new ones into the highly risky mortgage-backed securities that fell apart, Justice Department officials said Thursday.

Authorities probing pension-fund influence peddling on Thursday announced $17 million in settlements with targets of their investigations, including a high-profile California lobbyist and an investment firm founded by President Obama's former "auto czar." The settlements reached by the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo mark the latest development in a yearlong scandal centering on intermediaries who collected commissions from investment firms for brokering deals that brought the firms chunks of pension-fund money to manage.

Before film producers Gerald and Patricia Green took over a movie festival in Bangkok, the weeklong event struggled to capture Hollywood's attention. Over the next four years, the Southern California couple transformed the festival into a rising star on the international circuit for screening new films, attracting the likes of Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irons and director Oliver Stone to Thailand. The success earned the couple a small fortune and drew scrutiny from federal prosecutors who have charged them with bribing Thai officials to run the festival and land lucrative contracts.