The team members of BaFin’s Contact Point for Whistleblowers check out every lead they receive. The information is processed in several stages that we would like to explain to you as follows.

The steps taken to process information we receive

• in a first step, a team member at the BaFin Contact Point for Whistleblowers reads through your report and checks whether the infringement being reported lies within the scope of the Whistleblower Protection Act.
• after 7 days at the latest, you receive a confirmation of receipt if we have the means to contact you. It is possible for us to contact you if you have set up a mailbox at BKMS and regularly check the contents there or if you have provided us with another means of contacting you, e.g. via email. If you do not wish to receive a confirmation of receipt, please notify us of this when you submit your report.
• if BaFin is not the competent authority for your report, or if it is unable to further process the reported infringement within an appropriate period of time, we will immediately forward your report, ensuring that your identity remains confidential, to the office responsible for resolving, preventing or investigating the infringement in question. You will be notified if your report is to be forwarded in such a case. The procedure ends at this particular point.
• if BaFin is at least potentially the competent authority, the Contact Point for Whistleblowers checks the validity of the report and adopts appropriate further measures. In order to check the validity, the Contact Point for Whistleblowers may - if necessary - seek to obtain further information. 
• your report is then forwarded to the competent organisational units within BaFin. 
• the competent specialist divisions then carry out a closer examination of the case and initiate, if necessary, further investigations. The specialist divisions regularly inform the Contact Point for Whistleblowers about how far your report has progressed.
• within three months at the latest, you will receive a notification from the Contact Point for Whistleblowers about how far your report has progressed. This notification is sent within six months at the latest if the processing of your report is proving to be extensive. The notification contains information on the further measures that are at the planning stage as well as those already adopted, together with the reasons for this. We may only report back to you provided subsequent enquiries or investigations are not affected by this and the rights of persons who are the subject of the report or named in the report are not prejudiced as a result of such a notification. Furthermore, no confidentiality obligations may be violated. 
• in a further measure, BaFin may contact the employer concerned, may refer you to other competent authorities, conclude the procedure due to lack of evidence or other reasons or pass on the procedure to a competent authority. 
• if necessary, your report will be passed on to other bodies while observing the confidentiality regulations.
• when the Contact Point for Whistleblowers has brought the procedure to a conclusion, it is closed. 
• BaFin will inform you of the closure of the procedure in a final notification. The Contact Point for Whistleblowers informs you of the results of the examination triggered by your report provided this is compatible with statutory confidentiality obligations. If the Contact Point for Whistleblowers forwards a procedure to a competent authority (e.g. a public prosecutor's office) so that further investigations can be conducted, you will be informed of the results of the examinations once the other authority has completed them. However, this may only be done if it is compatible with statutory confidentiality obligations.
• if you wish to dispute the Contact Point for Whistleblowers’s decision to close the case, you have recourse to the Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgericht) of Frankfurt. No objection proceedings are held prior to this.

Deviating from normal procedure, the Contact Point for Whistleblowers may also:  

• give priority treatment to reports of particularly serious infringements.
• close the procedure if the report concerns a case that has already been closed under the Whistleblower Protection Act unless new facts have been brought to light as a result of the report. This does not apply if a new procedure is rolled out on account of new legal or factual circumstances.
• close the procedure because the Contact Point for Whistleblowers considers the reported infringement to be trivial (de minimis case).

Please note: every case is different and is given individual treatment by the Contact Point for Whistleblowers. For this reason there can be cases that deviate from the normal procedure explained above.

Follow-up measures under the Whistleblower Protection Act

To conduct a first examination of the validity of the report, the Contact Point for Whistleblowers may, after due assessment of the circumstances, demand information from the natural persons concerned, the employer concerned, third parties and authorities. This gives us the possibility to check the plausibility of your report and, if necessary, ask you to answer further questions. However, you are under no obligation to answer these questions. The Contact Point for Whistleblowers may forward the procedure to another competent authority or to the competent organisational unit within BaFin so that a further examination can be made. The Contact Point for Whistleblowers may also refer you to another competent authority. It can also close the procedure due to lack of evidence or for other reasons