AmCham Bulgaria, in collaboration with Penkov, Markov, and Partners and the Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP) organized an event on "Bulgaria’s Whistleblowing Act" on November 30th, 2023. The event aimed at discussing the importance of whistleblowing for good governance and featured representatives from these organizations, including Ivan Mihaylov, CEO of AmCham Bulgaria, Ventsislav Karadzhov, Chairman of the CPDP, Kalin Slavov, CEO of Transparency International Bulgaria (TIB), as well as Vladimir Penkov, Chairman and Senior Partner of Penkov, Markov & Partners.
The CPDP, designated as the Central Authority for external whistleblowing, emphasized on the need for protecting whistleblowers in both public and private sectors.
In his opening remarks Vladimir Penkov highlighted historical challenges and business resistance related to implementing the new legal regime, emphasizing the need for an effective and transparent reporting system. Our colleague Ana Krusteva presented key points of the local Whistleblowing Act, covering reporting scope, material aspects, obliged entities, and the three-tier whistleblowing system.
Kalin Slavov from TIB stressed the correlation between the ESG concept and the whistleblowing directive, emphasizing the importance of an organizational culture encouraging employees to speak up before resorting to whistleblowing.
The subsequent panel discussion, moderated by our colleague Nikolay Voynov, covered challenges faced by the CPDP, anonymous reporting, signals outside the law's scope, and insights from the Head of the PM&P Whistleblowing practice Asen Apostolov regarding challenges for businesses implementing the Whistleblowing Act, particularly in cases of global group policies. Asen Apostolov highlighted the need for careful consideration of country specifics in structuring internal reporting channels.
More details on the event you may find in the link below:
https://amcham.bg/2023/12/01/amcham-cpdp-penkov-markov-partners-and-transparency-international-bulgaria-discussed-bulgarias-whistleblowing-act-implementation/
