Scope of the system
In application of Chapter II of Law no. 2016-1691 of December 9, 2016, reinforced by the Waserman Law of March 22, 2022, Altavia has set up a whistleblowing system in order to strengthen its ethical approach and enable each employee to be a player in risk prevention.
This system allows anyone to report unethical behavior in good faith and without financial consideration, behavior or situations contrary to the code of conduct, particularly in the following areas:
- harm to health
- Security of property
- Money laundering
- Conflicts of interest
- Corruption
- Discrimination
- Fraud
- Sexual harassment or sexist behaviour
- Moral harassment, pressure or violence in the workplace
- Breach of competition rules
- Violation of personal data protection rules
- Violation of human rights
- Theft
- Environmental damage
The reporting party may :
- Be a victim of an incident
- have witnessed it
- Reveal facts reported to him/her
If the information was not obtained in the course of professional activities, the whistleblower must have had personal knowledge of it, or the facts must have been reported to him or her.
The whistleblowing system is open to the following persons:
- All employees of ALTAVIA Group entities
- Shareholders
- Members of administrative, management or supervisory bodies
- External and occasional employees
- Subcontractors and suppliers with whom the Group has an established business relationship.
Reports must be made in good faith and without direct financial consideration.
- The whistleblower will not be remunerated for disclosing the facts.
- Whistleblowers are considered to be acting in “good faith” when they provide information they believe to be fair and accurate, i.e. when they believe the information to be true, even if it subsequently turns out to have been an error.
Facts, information and documents, whatever their form or medium, the revelation or disclosure of which is prohibited by provisions relating to national defense secrecy, medical secrecy, the secrecy of judicial deliberations, the secrecy of judicial inquiries or investigations or the professional secrecy of lawyers are excluded from the whistleblowing regime defined by the Law of December 9, 2016.
Whistleblowers must provide the facts, information or documents, whatever their form or medium, to support their alert.
Use of the right to alert must comply with the law and rules applicable in the country where the whistleblower operates.
The employee may also use his or her right to alert the Group to any of the above-mentioned issues, by contacting one of the following persons: the Human Capital Officer, the Harassment Officer (if applicable), employee representatives (if applicable), or General Management.
If the employee feels that this approach may cause difficulties, he or she may also contact the Altavia Group’s ethics case managers in the language of his or her choice, in complete confidentiality, at any time, via the ethics alert platform: https://altavia.whispli.com/lp/speakup?locale=fr.
This system does not replace other existing alert channels, but complements them.
Process
When reporting, the whistleblower describes his or her concern objectively and clearly, indicating his or her link with Altavia, the type of incident he or she wishes to report and the location of the incident on the Whispli platform.
In accordance with Article 59 of Law no. 2016-1691 of December 9, 2016, the whistleblower may make a completely anonymous report. In all cases, alerts will be processed in compliance with the rules applicable to the processing of personal data. Alerts will be collected, analyzed and processed in the strictest confidence.
Whistle-blowers will be informed within 7 working days that their alert has been received. They will be informed by a message available in their personal Whispli space.
Once a report has been submitted, a unique code is shared with the author of the report to access his/her personal chat box, where he/she can keep abreast of developments. Alternatively, the author can create an inbox to receive notifications and not lose access to the report.
Under no circumstances will the person concerned by the alert be able to obtain information concerning the author of the alert. The person concerned by the alert is informed within a reasonable period of time, not exceeding 1 month, of the nature of the alert concerning him or her, and of the team in charge of processing it.
The alert is processed within 3 months. Measures may be taken in response to the report, such as internal remedial action to reinforce a procedure, raising awareness or training the staff concerned, or a reminder of the rules. Depending on the seriousness of the situation, disciplinary action or legal action may be taken.
Full details of the procedure for handling alerts are available in the Group’s policy for handling ethical alerts in Appendix 3.
Whistleblower protection
Whistleblowers will not be penalized for reporting a warning in compliance with Articles 6 to 8 of Law 2016-1691 of December 9, 2016 on transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life. Enhanced protective measures have been deployed with the Waserman Act of March 22, 2022.
Any person obstructing the transmission of an alert in any way whatsoever may be punished by up to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 15,000 euros.
In the event of non-compliance with the law in any of the above-mentioned areas, disciplinary action may be taken, up to and including dismissal, and legal proceedings may be instituted. Data relating to alerts will be stored or destroyed in accordance with legal provisions.
It is reminded that alerts must under no circumstances be motivated by malice or bad faith, on pain of disciplinary sanctions.
In accordance with Article 122-9 of the French Penal Code, a person who breaches a secret protected by law is not criminally liable, provided that such disclosure is necessary and proportionate to safeguard the interests in question, that it takes place in compliance with the reporting conditions defined by law and that the person meets the criteria for defining a whistleblower set out in Article 6 of Law no. 2016-1691 of December 9, 2016 on transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernization of economic life.
Similarly, persons who have reported or publicly disclosed information under the conditions provided for by legal texts are not civilly liable for damage caused as a result of their reporting or public disclosure provided that they had reasonable grounds to believe, when they did so, that the reporting or public disclosure of all of this information was necessary to safeguard the interests involved.
Furthermore, whistleblowers may not be subjected to reprisals, threats or attempts to take such measures, in particular in the following forms (Waserman Act of March 22, 2022 and articles L1121-2, L1132-1, L1132-3, L1132-3-3, L1132-4, L1152-2, L1152-3, L1153-2, L1153-4 of the Labor Code):
- suspension, layoff, dismissal or equivalent measures;
- demotion or refusal of promotion;
- reduction in salary, change in working hours;
- suspension of training;
- intimidation, harassment;
- direct or indirect discrimination;
- failure to convert a fixed-term or temporary employment contract into a permanent one, where the employee had a legitimate expectation of being offered permanent employment;
- non-renewal or termination of a fixed-term or temporary employment contract;
- cancellation of a license or permit.
As a result, whistleblowers cannot be sued for damages caused by reporting in good faith.
These same protections extend to :
- persons involved in the investigation, understood as any natural person or any non-profit private-law legal entity that helps a whistleblower to make a report or disclosure in compliance with legal provisions (1º of Article 6-1 of Law no. 2016-1691 of December 9, 2016). Similarly, they will not be able to be civilly prosecuted for their involvement in the investigation.
- natural persons linked to the whistleblower, who risk being subject to one of the aforementioned measures as part of their professional activities on the part of their employer, their client or the recipient of their services (2º of article 6-1 of law no. 2016-1691 of December 9, 2016).
The alert system and the procedure to follow are detailed on Whispli, the ethical alert platform.