Government Accountability Project
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| Abbreviation | GAP |
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| Type | Non-profit organization |
| Purpose | To promote government and corporate accountability by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists. |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Website | www |
The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is a whistleblower protection and advocacy organization in the United States. A nonprofit public interest group, GAP litigates whistleblower cases, helps expose wrongdoing to the public, and actively promotes government and corporate accountability. Since its founding in 1977, GAP has helped more than 5,000 whistleblowers. GAP's leadership includes Anna Myers as Executive Director, Louis Clark as President, and Tom Devine as Legal Director.
GAP's Board of Directors includes Getulio Carvalho, Richard Foos, Mark Niles, Richard Salzman, and Brad S. Weeks.
The organization's program areas include Corporate & Financial Accountability, Environmental Sustainability, Food Integrity, International Reform, National Security & Human Rights, and Public Health.
In December 2012, Eric Ben-Artzi came forward publicly with evidence of multi-billion dollar securities violations at Deutsche Bank, the global financial services company. Ben-Artzi joined Deutsche Bank in 2010 as a quantitative risk analyst in the company's Market Risk Management department. He internally reported violations stemming from the bank's failure to report the value of its credit derivatives portfolio accurately. Specifically, he showed that the bank had inflated the value and underestimated the risk of a significant number of its trades. The bank retaliated in multiple ways and ultimately dismissed him. Ben-Artzi's story led to a series of front-page investigative pieces by the Financial Times. Reports showed that the Bank concealed up to $10 billion in losses and that German regulators had been briefed previously about the fraudulent activities but did nothing. Independent economists have backed Ben-Artzi's allegations. Eric Ben-Artzi is believed to be one of the first whistleblowers to make his concerns public while engaged in the SEC whistleblower process under the new Dodd-Frank regulations.
Richard Bowen is a former vice president at Citigroup who tried to warn the Bank's senior management that the percentage of defective mortgages in the bank’s portfolio had risen dramatically. Specifically, he was responsible for evaluating the quality of $90 billion of mortgages that Citigroup bought annually from Countrywide Financial and other lenders. On a 2011 episode of 60 Minutes, Bowen detailed how he began to raise concerns internally in June 2006 upon discovering that some 60% of mortgages (totaling $50 billion) sold by Citigroup to other investors did not meet the bank’s own credit-worthiness standards. Further, Bowen witnessed the way in which Citigroup intentionally lowered its standards for accepting subprime mortgage pools. He testified in 2010 before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission about his whistleblowing.
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