But that was only the beginning of the reprisals, he adds.
"All too soon, UBS began tampering with my yearly compensation and my disability insurance. But I refused to back off and instead filed additional information with the U.S. Department of Labor and the State of Connecticut.
"Meanwhile, the SEC, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice all refused to review my case, despite the anti-reprisal measures mandated by both the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and the Dodd-Frank Act (2010).
These days, Mark Mohan is living on the edge of bankruptcy. "I lost my marriage and I'm now in danger of losing my house to foreclosure," he says. "I've learned the hard way that the process of adjudicating whistleblower complains is thoroughly biased in favor of employers."
Without legal funds or pro bono representation by an attorney, he recently filed "pro se" lawsuits against UBS in federal and state courts. "I'm told that I have little hope of success but I press on.
"Just recently, I stood alone in a courtroom while half a dozen UBS lawyers made a concerted effort to get my suit dismissed. They succeeded, at least temporarily although I'm now amending my complaints and will be back in court soon."
Mohan also pointed out that the judge in his federal case dismissed it "without prejudice," allowing him to re-file his claim in order to cure its deficiencies, mainly because he's still "technically employed" by UBS a step that was he was required to take in order to pursue his disability rights while struggling with a severe spinal ailment that makes it difficult for him to work more than an hour or two without severe back pain.
As he fights for his financial life, Mohan says has been "utterly disgusted" by recent news reports about several U.S. senators who reportedly "sold off" millions of dollars' worth of corporate stock . . . after learning from "intelligence agency briefings during closed-door sessions" that their holdings might soon plunge in value due to the approaching coronavirus epidemic. "This kind of immoral, unethical activity is surprisingly 'legal,'" he says, "since our lawmakers have one set of rules for themselves and another for everyone else.
"Regulators do absolutely nothing. Then spend their entire careers as high-paid attorneys defending the very-same Wall Street firms that they later regulate. Then they return to their former law firms after leaving office. Ask yourself this: Why is no one in jail after the [2008] financial crisis? To assume that regulators are 'looking out' for the American public is a laughable proposition, at this point.
"That's precisely the kind of 'insider trading' that I blew the whistle on with UBS," says Mohan today. "The corruption is everywhere, and someone has to speak up and speak the truth."
As a counselor who has worked with hundreds of whistleblowers over the years, I couldn't agree more. Whether we're talking about the "Ukraine Whistleblower" who recently spoke truth to the White House or about brave truth-tellers like Mark Mohan, we need to remember the words of that great German-Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spoke out about the evils of Nazism and paid for it with his life.
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil."
[A social worker who spent 27 years as an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, Donald R. Soeken often serves as an "expert witness" in cases involving whistleblowers. He is the author of Don't Kill the Messenger! How America's Valiant Whistleblowers Risk Everything in Order to Speak out Against Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Business and Government (https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Kill-Messenger-Whistleblowers-Everything/dp/1492898090).) Dr. Soeken lives in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.]
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