The Price Wristle-Blowers Pay for Secrets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Price Wristle-Blowers Pay for Secrets - Essay Example For example, according to the article â€Å"Whistle-Blower Awarded $104 Million by I.R.S†, written by David Kocieniewski, Bradley C. Birkenfeld, who used to be a banker at UBS, was caught helping a rich Californian developer to avoid paying income taxes in the US. After being arrested, he informed that he would disclose important information about the Swiss banking system which would help the US government retrieve lost taxes that amounted to billions of dollars. Many wealthy Americans had used their Swiss banks to avoid paying income tax in their country. Now the valuable information provided by the banker allowed the US government to get back a large sum of unpaid taxes from the Swiss banks. In return for this, the banker was given an award of $104 million, the highest amount ever paid to a whistle-blower. This whole idea of a person benefiting from a crime he committed is pretty ironical. A person involved in activities such as tax fraud is arrested, and when he complies with the authorities’ demands and reveals some vital information, he is rewarded. This means that, in effect, the person is actually being paid for the crime he has committed. The irony of the situation seems amusing. If a person accused of committing several crimes asks for freedom and some monetary reward in exchange for valuable information, he or she will get it. This will allow him or her to return to his previous life and no lesson will be learnt. Moreover, it has become a norm in the society that people demand some kind of reward before they can do something helpful. Many people realize that giving out valuable information is a great and easy way to make money, so they demand a reward before revealing any secrets even if the secrets can actually benefit their own country. The fact that many people want to be paid before doing the right thing is alarming, as it shows that the society is well down the downward path. In today’s