ALTANA offers a whistleblowing hotline to all employees worldwide as well as to customers, suppliers and other external partners. Via the whistleblowing hotline employees can report compliance breaches within ALTANA in a protected manner.
Compliance with laws and with certain internal rules is fundamental to every action at ALTANA. ALTANA requires all of its directors, officers, employees and intermediaries to act in accordance with applicable laws and policies and to observe high standards of business and personal ethics in the conduct of their duties and responsibilities. Every organisation faces the risk of unknowingly harbouring unlawful or unethical behaviour. The first step in abolishing such behaviour is to recognise it. ALTANA encourages each of its employees to report compliance breaches, either through one of the established channels like local management or, where existing, local works councils, or through the ALTANA Whistleblowing System.
Reports
Reports can be made either by telephone or in writing. Reports are made through an external service provider called Safecall. This way we can offer the ALTANA Whistleblowing System in almost every language spoken at ALTANA and 24/7. Also, the Safecall staff at the other end of the line are trained professionals with a lot of experience in taking such calls. If you want to make a report, please go to the Safecall website to find your freephone telephone number for reports by telephone as well as an online form for submitting your report in writing.
Anonymity & Non-Retaliation
When making the report, it is your choice whether you disclose your identity or remain anonymous. The ALTANA Whistleblowing System offers three types of confidentiality between which you can chose, and ALTANA will respect your choice:
- Known: When making your report, you can agree that your identity is disclosed to the Chief Compliance Officer and a small group of ALTANA central compliance staff that will be investigating your report (see the Whistleblowing Policy for the exact definition of this group of persons). Your identity will be kept confidential by them.
- Semi-anonymously: You have the option to disclose your name to the external service provider Safecall on the condition that Safecall does not disclose your identity to ALTANA. This way you enable the ALTANA investigation team to contact you via Safecall with potential follow-up questions even though your identify has not been disclosed to ALTANA.
- (Fully) Anonymously: Your third option is not to disclose your identity when making the report. This way you will remain fully anonymous.
We do encourage you to report either known or at least semi-anonymously. Often a report raises follow-up question during the investigation of the alleged compliance breach. Fully anonymous reports would not allow to raise such follow-up with the whistleblower and might leave an investigation without result.
In the Whistleblowing Policy ALTANA has undertaken to ensure that anybody making a report through the ALTANA Whistleblowing System will not be subject to retaliation.
Follow-Up On Reports
Reported compliance breaches will be investigated under the supervision of ALTANAs Chief Compliance Officer. Provided that the whistleblower has disclosed his or her identity (known or semi-anonymous report), the Chief Compliance Officer shall acknowledge receipt to the whistleblower and keep the whistleblower posted on progress and results of the investigation.
Truth & Reportable Compliance Breaches
Do not report information that you know is false. Reporting knowingly false information will be viewed as a serious disciplinary offence and will result in serious repercussions. The anonymity and non-retaliation protections offered are subject to you having reasonable grounds to believe that the information reported is true.
Reportable breaches are breaches of applicable law, breaches of ALTANAs Code of Conduct as well as breaches of an ALTANA corporate policy, not of internal local policies or guidelines, though.
Whistleblowing Policy
The confidentiality and non-retaliation protections are governed by ALTANAs Whistleblowing Policy, applicable to all employees worldwide since 1 March 2021. Please read the policy to understand the scope of the anonymity and non-retaliation protections offered as well as the conditions that must be met for these protections to apply. The policy also sets out the process in which ALTANA deals with reports made via the whistleblowing hotline. A copy of the policy can be retrieved here.
Contact
The person responsible for the ALTANA Whistleblowing System at ALTANA is Mr Jan Bir, General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer. Please do contact Jan at telephone +49 281 670-10500 or Legal@altana.com if you have any questions about whistleblowing at ALTANA.