HinSchG Reporting office

Objective of the HinSchG

1. This Act reg­u­lates the pro­tec­tion of nat­ural per­sons who have obtained infor­ma­tion about vio­la­tions in con­nec­tion with their pro­fes­sional activ­i­ties or in advance of a pro­fes­sional activ­ity and who report or dis­close this infor­ma­tion to the report­ing offices pro­vided for in this Act (whistle­blow­ers).
2. In addi­tion, per­sons who are the sub­ject of a report or dis­clo­sure and other per­sons affected by a report or dis­clo­sure are protected.
3. Def­i­n­i­tion
   1. Vio­la­tions are actions or omis­sions in the con­text of a pro­fes­sional, entre­pre­neur­ial or offi­cial activ­ity that are unlawful.
   2. Infor­ma­tion about vio­la­tions is rea­son­able sus­pi­cion or knowl­edge of actual or poten­tial vio­la­tions that have been or are very likely to be com­mit­ted at the employer where the report­ing per­son works or has worked, or at another entity with which the report­ing per­son is or has been in con­tact due to his or her pro­fes­sional activ­ity, as well as attempts to con­ceal such violations.
   3. Reports are com­mu­ni­ca­tions of infor­ma­tion about vio­la­tions to inter­nal or exter­nal report­ing offices or exter­nal report­ing offices, whereby the inter­nal report­ing office should be given pref­er­ence.
      

External reporting offices

It is also pos­si­ble to con­tact an exter­nal report­ing office directly. A cen­tral exter­nal report­ing office has been set up at the Fed­eral Office of Jus­tice (BfJ). There are also exist­ing report­ing sys­tems with spe­cial respon­si­bil­i­ties at the Fed­eral Finan­cial Super­vi­sory Author­ity (for vio­la­tions of super­vi­sory reg­u­la­tions, com­pli­ance with which is mon­i­tored by BaFin) and at the Fed­eral Car­tel Office (for spe­cific indi­ca­tions of antitrust vio­la­tions). The exist­ing report­ing pro­ce­dures to bod­ies, insti­tu­tions or other offices of the Euro­pean Union remain unaf­fected by the Whistle­blower Pro­tec­tion Act.