I want to whistleblow on the company that just made me redundant. Where do I stand legally? (England)

Throwaway account for obvious reasons!

To preface this, I am a British citizen currently living in France, and the company I am discussing is based in Malta – however, I was hired whilst living in the UK, and the issue I’m discussing is targeting the UK market.

The company I was recently made redundant from has been in several news outlets this week, primarily for their choice to gut reputable gaming websites in favour of AI-written gambling content.

I was one of the writers who was forced to churn out this copy, after the company CEO decided to embrace AI at the beginning of February via an internal Slack message – before I and hundreds of others were let go at random two weeks later.

The main problem isn’t being touched on by these investigative journalists, though, which is that this company actively told us to promote illegal gambling to UK audiences (we would have to advertise offshore, unlicensed casino sites), and we would also be told to use titles like “best non-GAMSTOP casinos” to target problem gamblers who had signed up to the self-exclusion service.

I felt completely and utterly violated when I was asked to do this, and I would often include in my copy that playing at these sites was illegal – but then we’d receive briefs explicitly telling us not to mention the legality of joining and playing at these offshore casinos. My copy would be edited after I had uploaded it to a website’s backend, and we would be told to publish under an AI-generated name and picture instead of our own.

From my knowledge as someone with many years in the industry, advertising in this manner is in direct violation of the UK Gambling Act at the very least. I’d like to think of myself as a reputable writer in the industry, but my tenure at this company is a stain on my career. We were asked to remove the company name from our LinkedIn profiles and not tell anyone where we worked, but my name is still associated with some earlier articles I wrote whilst working there. Some employees were told to sign NDAs or risk not getting their final pay (I didn’t sign any NDA upon being let go). I also don’t want to have a gap on my CV, nor do I want to honestly tell prospective future employees that I worked for this company when the ugly truth about it is now surfacing.

I have already reported this company to the UKGC as a whistleblower, but I’m now wondering what my options are in terms of speaking out publicly. This feels like a pivotal time to do so, with massive crackdowns happening on offshore gambling and the company itself being in the spotlight. Some ex-colleagues are unable to speak out legally, but others have begun to do so. I may be a disgruntled employee (we were repeatedly paid late, had zero transparency in terms of the company itself etc) but I also feel like I have extremely valuable and necessary insight into this illegal operation.

My contract of employment expires on March 16th, so I was considering waiting until then – but a huge exposé went live this week on the company, which is missing the details I can provide. I’m frankly sick and tired of this industry preying on vulnerable people, and I’m furious with the way the company treated us and its readers, so I feel a real compulsion to speak out from a place of authority. I have hard copies of briefs, Slack messages etc to back me up. As I’m planning on discussing something against the law, am I right in thinking I’m automatically protected if I go public?