Govt to Establish Criminal Punishments to Protect Whistleblowers; Will Penalize their Dismissal and Unfair Treatment by Organizations and Individuals

The Yomiuri Shimbun

2:00 JST, December 25, 2024

The government plans to submit a bill to revise the Whistleblower Protection Law to the next ordinary Diet session, to be convened in January, to impose criminal punishments on corporations and other entities that mistreat whistleblowers by dismissing them or through other means.

Officials concluded it was necessary to enhance the law in light of the case of a prefectural senior official who was given a three-month suspension after accusing of the governor of wrongdoing.

Criminal punishment is expected to be imposed on organizations and individuals that violate the law. The degree of that punishment will be finalized going forward. The Whistleblower Protection Law already prohibits mistreating people for whistleblowing, but there have been no penal provisions against violations.

Dismissing and taking disciplinary measures against whistleblowers are expected to be subjected to criminal punishment as forms of mistreatment. But the government does not plan to cover personnel relocations and harassment under this law, because it is expected to be difficult to objectively determine their causal connection with whistleblowing.

The Whistleblower Protection Law already obliges companies and other entities with more than 300 employees to set up an internal consultation center for whistleblowing and assign personnel to respond to reports from whistleblowers. The government also plans to introduce criminal penalties for failure to meet these obligations.

The government also plans to introduce new clauses that ban trying to figure out a whistleblower’s identity and trying to obstruct whistleblowing, such as by making employees promise not to blow the whistle when they sign an employment contract.

According to a 2023 questionnaire by the Consumer Affairs Agency, 17.2% of whistleblowers said they regretted having made their reports, citing such reasons as they were mistreated or their colleagues found out that they were a whistleblower.

In the case of Hyogo Gov. Motohiko Saito, who was accused of using his power to harass prefectural government officials, the prefectural government identified the whistleblower, who was then a senior government official, and handed him a three-month disciplinary suspension. It was pointed out that the prefectural government’s acts violated the Whistleblower Protection Law, which prohibits any mistreatment of whistleblowers due to their whistleblowing.

In the case of major used car dealer Bigmotor Co., whose operations were taken over by a new company after revelations of fraudulent insurance claims by the original management, it came to light that the company failed to have a whistleblowing system.

A Consumer Affairs Agency panel tasked with discussing systems to protect whistleblowers plans to compile a report by the end of this year. The report by the panel, which is headed by University of Tokyo Prof. Ryuji Yamamoto, is expected to point to the need to incorporate criminal penalties into the law. The government will make preparations to revise the law in line with the report’s findings.

The government hopes to adopt the revision bill at a Cabinet meeting in February and submit it to the ordinary Diet session.