In 2010, General Electric (GE) was slapped by the Securities and Exchange Commission for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The agency fined GE $23.4 million for its plan to bribe Iraqi government officials and agencies to win competitive contracts to supply water purification and medical equipment.

The conglomerate may be going down that same road again, with a former GE employee and now whistleblower contending that GE fired him for his expressed concerns within the company that it was once again violating anti-bribery laws.

Khaled Asadi was a GE executive in Iraq until the company terminated his services last year. He says that his career took a sudden and sharp downward slide a year before that, after he criticized the company's hiring of a woman who had close contacts to a senior Iraqi official in that country's electricity ministry. Asadi objected to that act by raising his concerns -- most specifically that GE was bidding on a $250 million contract in that industry at the time -- with his supervisor and the GE ombudsperson.

He says that, as a result, he was given an "extremely negative and troubling performance report." A GE spokesperson denies that any of Asadi's performance reports related to his accusation.

General Electric states that Asadi violated his employment contract by suing the company in court rather than taking his dispute to binding arbitration. Asadi cited the Dodd-Frank Act and its anti-whistleblower retaliation clause in response, which he says allows him to circumvent the provision in his contract.

Source: Huffington Post, "General Electric whistleblower says he was fired for raising concerns about potential corruption" Marcus Baram, Feb. 8, 2012