For criminal behaviour from the organisation, the burden of proof needs to be reversed. The CEO should need to prove they did not know and did not endorse tacitally or otherwise and would have reacted strongly to prevent and effectively sanction those responsible if they had found out in advance.

It's their job to know. Only if they are a victim of a genuine criminal conspiracy performed by other employees and it can be shown without the CEO's knowledge should there be any defence.

CEO's are quite happy to tell people to do things without telling them to do the thing. That has been going on for centuries. Shakespeare wrote whole plays about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

One of the things I found incredible about the antitrust hearings this past year was how heavily every Big Tech CEO relied on "I don't know", "I don't recall", or "I'll have to get back to you". Often about things I, an outsider, know of.

It strains plausibility they didn't know, they're just punting to a time they aren't under oath.

CWA, CAA, CERCLA, and RCRA provide these protections for whistleblowers and a framework for financial incentives, though these incentives are paltry compared to SEC whistleblower rewards.

https://echo.epa.gov/report-environmental-violations

https://www.whistleblowers.gov

As much as the liberal-libertarian crowd on HN likes to be vocal against most forms of government licensure, protection from ethical breaches like this is one of the best things about them. You can tell your employer to pound sand because neither you nor anyone they could replace you with will be willing to risk their license to do something unethical. And even if they could find someone sketch to try and push it through you’re protected by your professional review board.

> I like the concept of this, but it seems like it'd be tough to validate that something was actually illegal from the individual actor's level.

By design. The corporate structure of plausible deniability protects executives, and ultimately shareholders, when lower level actors are subtly "encouraged" to commit criminal behavior which advantages the company — and then cut loose if they get caught.

The incentives provide a strong force ensuring corporate criminality in the aggregate which completely overwhelms the weak force discouraging it at the individual level.

Okay, so whoever lied about there being a contract (and anyone who authorizatied the lie) should be culpable.