As a supervisory authority for the financial market, BaFin has a special responsibility to exercise its sovereign powers and duties in an objective manner and based on factual criteria.

In business life, it is normal to offer gifts to one's business partners on certain occasions (e.g. New Year's) and to thus express thanks for good contacts or successful cooperation.

Naturally BaFin's employees are also pleased to enjoy good relations with their contact persons in the wider economy and are happy when their tasks are performed smoothly.

As part of the public administration, however, the acceptance of even small gifts and other non-cash benefits for BaFin employees is always associated with a duty of disclosure and permitted only within narrow parameters.

Therefore we have a special request to our contact persons in the wider economy and parties to administrative procedures:

Please do not express your satisfaction with a good cooperation through gifts. Do not even allow the stage to be reached whereby our employees have to reject gifts, which are well-meant by you, in order to prevent creating the appearance of potential influence in performing public duties.

Contact

Should you have reason to believe that employees of BaFin have accepted financial or other benefits for themselves or third parties for performing their work (e.g. for a related institution or family member), you may contact us at the following address:

Your e-mail will be sent directly to the Anti-Corruption Officer at BaFin.

We kindly ask you to describe your concern in plain text and refrain from sending links, documents etc. when contacting us by email for the first time. We cannot guarantee that emails addressed to this mailbox which carry such attachments will be registered by the Anti-Corruption Officer.

In case of doubt, you may obtain telephone advice using the free corruption hotline 0800-5677878 (0800-KORRUPT) of the State Office for Criminal Investigation of North Rhine-Westphalia. Tip-offs may be given there as well.