Watch Eliza Lockhart at the OECD 2025 Global Integrity & Anti-Corruption Forum, discussing the legal framework needed for whistleblowers to support anti-corruption efforts

On 25 March, Eliza Lockhart, SOC ACE Researcher and Research Fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), took part in an OECD Knowledge Partner Session, convened by the National Whistleblower Centre entitled, ‘Empowering whistleblowers: Strengthening protections in the fight against corruption.’ In response to the current trends in the U.S. that highlight the need for enhanced international whistleblower protections, this session discusses the legal framework needed to permit them in being able to play a key role in winning major anti-corruption cases.

Eliza is joined by Stephen Kohn, partner in the law firm of Kohn, Kohn and Colapinto and the Chairman for the Board of the National Whistleblower Center., María de los Ángeles Estrada, Lawyer, leading Transparency, Anti Corruption, and Digitalization Initiative in Mexico, Christopher Wylie, whistleblower, exposing massive privacy violations by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, Eric Hylton, former Deputy of the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division and head of International Operations, and Emin Huseynov, human rights defender, journalist, and whistleblower-advocate.

During the panel discussion, Eliza draws on her SOC ACE research paper, ‘Financial rewards for whistleblowers in the fight against economic crime’, that reviews the evidence from the US and Canada on the use of reward programmes for whistleblowers who report incidents of economic crime. The paper evaluates the evidence against concerns raised by Australia and the UK, two countries that are debating the implementation of such a scheme. In doing so, the paper proposes how positive outcomes of such schemes may be contingent on appropriate safeguards being integrated into reward scheme design that account for context-specific cultural attitudes and that mitigate possible unintended consequences.

Watch the OCED Knowledge Partner Session recording here, and keep up to date with other related project publications and events here.