This is actually particularly bad. They followed company policy and pointed out the compliance issues but Microsoft did not reprimand the employee involved and

This is actually particularly bad. They followed company policy and pointed out the compliance issues but Microsoft did not reprimand the employee involved and instead promoted them into a position that they could more easily evade accountability and also punish the person that had drawn attention to compliance issues. It gets worse as they are put on a performance improvement plan (PIP), even though they have 18 years of experience and presumably had no significant performance issues up until this point. If the information about corruption within the post is true, Microsoft undoubtedly deserve to pay a significant fine, but unfortunately: > What is a shock: This time around, the SEC and DOJ > have both declined to investigate Microsoft over > the same types of bribes in the Middle East and > Africa. They acknowledged my evidence (which I > submitted three times) yet did not take up the > case, claiming that the current pandemic has > prevented them from gathering more evidence from > abroad—even though I have already provided > documentation that I believe shows Microsoft is in > breach of the 2019 agreement and is still > participating in corrupt business practices in > direct violation of U.S. law. I think that by not punishing this the SEC and DOJ are sending a signal to whistleblowers in large corporations that they do not take compliance seriously and that they will not protect employees that try to draw attention to wrongdoing. At the very least it suggests to me that when whistleblowing, you must avoid alerting anybody in your organisation that you disagree with what you see, and do everything through external parties instead of internal policies.