Reporting and whistleblowing procedure

Introduction

Energy Pool group strives to protect its integrity and fights against any practice that may be
illegal or contradict with its ethical principles. Energy Pool ensures that its employees, its
executives and its other external or casual workers do not commit any act which could engage
its liability.

In accordance with the law n°2016-1691 of February 16th, 2022 (known as Sapin II) and the
law n°2022-401 of March 21st, 2022, Energy Pool set up the following procedure in order to
facilitate reporting of serious facts, incidents and business wrongdoing. The alert reporting
system aims to ensure the strict confidentiality of the procedure and the anonymity of the
whistleblower.

Hence, any employee or stakeholder who complies with the rules contained in the
present procedure will beneficiate from the status and protection granted to
whistleblowers as under French law. Moreover, this procedure provides the necessary
safeguards to confidentiality of the information reported, in the interests of all.
Therefore, we encourage you to comply with its terms.

 

1. Who does this procedure apply to?

This procedure applies to all Energy Pool employees, but also to self-employed workers,
shareholders, members of governance bodies, members of management, volunteers,
interns, suppliers, subcontractors, former employees, as well as job applicant when the
information was obtained as part of an application process.
Energy Pool encourages its employees to report any incident or wrongdoing in application of
this procedure, but underlines that there is no obligation to do so.

 

2. What are the conditions to benefit from the whistleblower status?

To meet the definition of “whistleblower” and benefit from its protection regime, the person who
makes a report must:
• Be a natural person;
• Have lawful knowledge of the facts (when the information was not obtained in a
professional context, the whistleblower must have personal knowledge of the facts);
• Have made an external or internal report following this procedure;
• Demonstrate good faith regarding the information known by him at the time of the
report;
• Act without any direct financial compensation.

Facilitators who assist “a whistleblower during the reporting process in a professional context
and whose assistance should be confidential” will also benefit from the whistleblower
protection regime. Facilitators may be, for example, an association or a company’s union
that accompanies the whistleblower in the procedure.

 

3. What facts may be reported?

The alert may relate to one of the following facts, whether proven or suspected:

1/ A felony or a crime (tax evasion, corruption, illegal taking of interests, abuse of corporate
assets, cartel, moral harassment, sexual harassment, etc.), or

2/ A breach or attempted concealment of a breach of an obligation arising from law,
regulation, international law or European law, or

3/ A threat or impairment to the general interest (damage to public security, the
environment, serious management error, etc.), or

4/ A violation of the Ethic Charter of Energy Pool.

And provided that the information reported is not covered by secrecy (defence secrecy,
medical secrecy, professional secrecy, judicial secrecy).
Business secrecy, on the other hand, cannot be opposed to the whistleblower.

 

4. To whom must the report be sent?

1/ The whistleblower may first choose to issue an alert report by using the internal procedure.
In that case, the report must be sent to one of the following contact persons designated within
the group:

Yann CAGNET
Legal Director
yann.cagnet@energy-pool.eu +33 6 77 10 45 28

Alexia DASSONVILLE
Legal Manager
alexia.dassonville@energy-pool.eu +33 7 86 80 94 18

In the event the report is received by another staff member, the latter must transmit the report
without delay to either of the contact person and keep confidential the information to which he
has had access.

2/ The whistleblower may also choose to issue its report directly to:

• The competent authority (between those listed in the annex of the Decree N°2022-
1284 of October 3rd, 2022 (AFA, competition authority, AMF, CNIL, IGEDD…);
• The administrative/judicial authority;
• A European institution, organism, or body;
• A professional order.

3/ The whistleblower is entitled to make the alert public in the following limitative cases:

• The alert is not processed within a reasonable timeframe defined by decree;
• Risk of retaliation;
• If the report has no chance of succeeding;
• The facts giving rise to the alert constitute a serious and imminent threat;
• The evidence could be dissimulated or destroyed;
• If the author of the report has serious grounds for believing that the authority may be in
conflict of interest, in collusion with the author of the facts or involved in these facts; or
• For information obtained in the professional context, in the event of imminent or
manifest danger for the general interest, in particular when there is an emergency
situation or a risk of irreversible damage.

In any cases, the public disclosure must be documented.

Note: the whistleblower is solely responsible for assessing the need and the possibility of
transmitting the report to the judicial/administrative authority, a European body or to a
competent professional order or of making it public. Particularly, it is his responsibility to ensure
that the conditions for issuing an alert are met. If necessary, the whistleblower can seek advice
from a lawyer, from the whistleblower’s house, or from the Rights defender, which is the
administrative authority in charge of guiding and protecting whistleblowers.

 

5. What is the reporting process?

A report may be sent orally or in writing to one or the other of the competent contact person
via email, letter, phone call, by any other voice mail system, by videoconference or during
a physical meeting.

The report must contain:

• The term « confidential » and « reporting » or « alert » in the
object of the report (for written reports)
• The date of the reported events (if known)
• A description, as detailed as possible, of the facts.

The whistleblower can choose whether or not to indicate its identity (surname, first name, work
position, email and postal addresses, telephone number, etc.).
Either way, the identity of the whistleblower, the person concerned by the report and any third
party there mentioned will be treated as strictly confidential.
When a report or public disclosure has been made anonymously, the whistleblower whose
identity has been revealed at a later stage may benefit from the protection.

The whistleblower must report the facts and information in a precise and objective manner. Only those elements which are directly linked to matters within the scope of the reporting procedure and which are strictly necessary for verification operations will be considered. Any information communicated that does not fall within the procedure shall be destroyed.

Oral report

In the case of request for an oral report, the contact person will organize an interview with the
whistleblower within 20 business days from the receipt of the request.

Any report made orally will be registered/recorded as follows:

1/ When collected, with the consent of the whistleblower, on a recorded telephone line or on
another recorded voicemail system: by recording the conversation on a durable and
recoverable medium or by transcribing it in full.

2/ When collected on an unrecorded telephone line or on another unrecorded voice mail
system: by establishing detailed minutes of the conversation.

3/ When collected during a videoconference or a physical meeting: by establishing, with the
consent of the whistleblower, either a recording of the conversation on a durable and
recoverable medium, or detailed minutes.

The whistleblower may verify, rectify and approve the transcript of the interview by signing off
the minutes.
The recordings, transcriptions and minutes will be retained only for the time strictly necessary
and proportionate for processing the report and protecting their authors, the persons
concerned, and the third parties mentioned.

 

6. How are alerts processed?

Receipt of the report

Provided that the report contains the necessary identification information, the contact person
shall, within a period of 7 business days, confirm in writing the receipt of the report to the
whistleblower and inform him/her of the foreseeable and reasonable timeframe for processing
the report and how he/she will be informed of the outcome given to the report.

Admissibility of the report

The contact person determines whether the report is admissible or not, and then inform the
whistleblower of its decision. If the report is not admissible the whistleblower will be informed
of the reasons.

If the report is not anonymous, the contact person may request additional elements from the
whistleblower during the examination of the report, including proof that he/she belongs to one
of the categories of persons listed above in paragraph 1.
The contact person will inform the whistleblower in writing, within a reasonable period of time
not exceeding 3 months from the acknowledgment of receipt of the report (or, in the absence
of acknowledgment of receipt, 3 months from the end of the 7 business days period following
the submission of the report) about the measures foreseen or taken to assess the accuracy of
the allegations and the subject of the report.

Report within the Energy Pool group

When the contact person considers that the report relates to facts that occurred or are likely to
occur in a company of the consolidated group of Energy Pool Development, it may advice the
whistleblower to address his/her report to the said company.
If the contact person considers that the report will be treated more efficiently by this other
company, it can suggest to the whistleblower to withdraw his/her first report.

Report closure

If the contact person finds that the allegations are inaccurate or unfounded, or that the report
is not applicable anymore, it may close the procedure. The whistleblower will be informed in
writing of the closure of the procedure.

Investigation procedures

he contact person examines the report, if necessary, with the other contact person, the CEO
of the company and any other employee or external staff whose intervention is strictly
necessary for the examination of the report and provided that this person is bound by a
confidentiality obligation. The contact person however shall not reveal the identity of either the
whistleblower, the person concerned or any third party there mentioned. To do so, the contact
person must anonymize the report, prior to the disclosure.
The whistleblower and the person concerned are informed of the outcome of the investigation,
which may lead to a sanction in accordance with the provisions of the internal rules (règlement
intérieur) of the company (for examples: corrective measures, disciplinary sanctions, etc.).

File destruction

If the report is not admissible (because the conditions settled in paragraphs 2 and/or 3 are nor
met) or if the report is admissible but does not lead to any sanction, the contact person shall
destroy or archive (after anonymisation) the report’s elements, including emails with the
whistleblower, no later than 1 month following the end of the verification operations. For
statistical reasons, the contact person may record the occurrence of the report and its year.
When disciplinary sanctions or legal proceedings are taken following the report, report’s data
are retained until the end of the procedure.

 

7. A confidential procedure

The contact persons are bound by a strict confidentiality obligation. They shall ensure that the
following information are kept confidential:

• Identity of the whistleblower;
• Identity of the natural person(s) targeted by the report;
• Information collected within the report’s.

This confidentiality obligation also applies vis-à-vis the other members of the staff.
The contact person agrees to store the information collected during the procedure in a secure
manner. If elements are electronically stored, the contact person will program an automatic
storage of received emails in a dedicated file of their mailbox marked “confidential”. If elements
are physically held, they must be stored in a folder marked “confidential”, and in a locked place.

In case of breach of its confidentiality obligation by the contact person or any third party, the
following sanctions may apply: 2 years imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros.
The contact person may only disclose information about the whistleblower’s identity after
having received the prior consent of the whistleblower.

By way of exception, this information may be disclosed to the judicial authorities, provided that
the alert is founded, that the whistleblower is informed, and that the disclosure does not
compromise the legal proceedings.

Personal data protection

Personal data collected under this procedure is processed for the purpose of processing alert
reports.

In accordance with the European Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on the protection of natural
persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data
(“GDPR”), reports are only retained for the time strictly necessary and proportionate to their
processing and to the protection of their authors, the people targeted by the report and the
third parties they mention. If the case may be, the duration of additional investigations will be
taken into account. Personal data may however be retained beyond this period if the natural
persons cannot be identified.

The whistleblower may exercise his/her rights of information, access, rectification, erasure and
opposition to the processing of his/her personal data by sending a request to the contact
person.

 

8. How is the whistleblower protected?

As a reminder, in order to benefit from this protection, the whistleblower must meet the
conditions mentioned in paragraphs 2 and 3 of the procedure.

No retaliation measures

If the conditions for protecting the whistleblower are met, the latter cannot be dismissed,
sanctioned, or discriminated in any way whatsoever (directly or indirectly): dismissal,
disciplinary measure, remuneration, access to training, promotion, profit-sharing, distribution
of shares, reclassification, assignment, qualification, classification, working hours,
performance evaluation, transfer, renewal of contract.

No discriminatory measure or decision may be taken against a facilitator, or any person linked
to a whistleblower.

In the event of litigation regarding a retaliation measure, the burden of proof is on the company.

In the event of litigation, the court may, in addition to any other sanction, require the employer
to top up the personal training account (CPF) of the employee who launched the alert, up to
the ceiling defined in article L6323-11-1 of the labour Code.

Civil and criminal irresponsibility

The whistleblower benefits from the regime of civil irresponsibility and criminal
irresponsibility under article 122-9 of the criminal Code.

Offence of obstruction

Anyone who tries to prevent the whistleblower from issuing an alert is liable to a penalty of 1
year’s imprisonment and a fine of 15 000 €.
In the event of abusive defamation proceedings against a whistleblower, the civil fine may be
up to 60 000 €. This penalty may be supplemented by damages and/or the obligation for the
company to display the court decision.

Financial and psychological support

The company may bear the cost of the procedures initiated by the whistleblower:

• At the start of the trial, the judge may grant a provision for legal costs to the
whistleblower;
• The judge may grant an additional provision to the whistleblower whose financial
situation has been seriously deteriorated;
• The judge may make these provisions final and binding at any time, even if the
whistleblower loses his case.

Whistleblowers can also benefit from psychological and financial support from external
authorities, whether they have been contacted directly or via the Rights defender. In addition,
the whistleblowers’ house also offers psychological support.

 

9. What are the rights of the persons targeted by a report?

Persons targeted by the report are entitled to access the information that relates to them and
request the contact person to rectify or delete it if the information is inexact, incomplete,
ambiguous, or obsolete.
In addition, in the event of false allegations, the whistleblower may be liable to a fine up to
30 000 €.

10. Final provisions

The present procedure will be annexed to the internal rules (règlement intérieur). It can be
consulted on the company’s network as well as on its website.

 

Update : 14/10/2022
® Energy Pool Développement SAS
Reporting and whistleblowing Procedure