Whistleblowing

We do not tolerate unethical or criminal behavior in the workplace at our company. By setting up an internal reporting office, we can register any misconduct. Your notice will help us to identify and remedy violations at an early stage. If, at the time of reporting, there is sufficient reason to believe that the notice is correct, no negative consequences are to be expected for you.

As part of the implementation of the EU Directive on the protection for whistleblowers into national law, the German legislator has introduced the Whistleblower Protection Act (HinSchG). The aim of the HinSchG is to protect persons who have obtained information about violations during their professional activities and report them. In accordance with §16 (3) HinSchG, we have set up an internal reporting channel for this purpose, which can be accessed via compliance@collana-it.com. Violations must be noticed in accordance with §2 HinSchG.

Reports received via this channel are processed by the internal reporting office, which is staffed by three employees of the collana IT Group. Anonymous reports are also followed up.

The protection of confidentiality has top priority when processing incoming reports. Accordingly, the employees who are part of the internal reporting office have committed themselves to confidentiality in accordance with §8 and 9 HinSchG. Furthermore, they have the necessary specialist knowledge for this task in accordance with §15 (2) HinSchG.

Processing and handling of reports:

After receiving a notice, the reporting office must confirm it within seven days and provide information on planned or taken measures within three months (§17 HinSchG).

The notices received are checked by the internal reporting office to determine whether they fall within the material scope of application (§2 HinSchG) by initiating appropriate follow-up measures. To this end, internal investigations are first initiated, possible measures to rectify the problem are implemented and, if necessary, a responsible authority is involved (§18 HinSchG).

All incoming reports must be documented and stored for three years, unless there is a legal requirement for longer storage (§11 HinSchG).

In addition to the regulations of the HinSchG, the regulations of the EU GDPR also apply.

Information about external reporting offices:

Independently of the internal reporting office, the official authorities also process notices of criminal behavior. Every citizen is free to contact them as well.

The Federal Office of Justice is one of the external reporting offices in Germany responsible for you. If you would like to contact the Federal Office, you can do so at any time using the contact form or the email address below. You can also contact the Federal Office with your questions during business hours.

Contact:

Telephone: +49 228 99 410-40

Fax: +49 228 410-5050

Email: poststelle@bfj.bund.de

De-Mail: post@bundesjustizamt.de-mail.de

Business hours:

Mon. to Thurs.: 08:00h to 16:00h and Fri: 08:00h to 14:30h

There are other external reporting offices, e.g. at federal state level.

We would like to point out that you can instead also contact our company's internal reporting channel described above.