Germany: Local Labour Court confirms personal accountability for whistleblowing failures

The claimant had been employed for over twelve years as group general counsel of a large corporate group and held senior committee roles relating to legal, compliance and responsibility matters.

In October 2023, a whistleblower report was submitted alleging irregularities at a group subsidiary.  An internal investigation was initiated and involved the group compliance officer and the claimant. However, several requirements of the internal whistleblowing procedure were not complied with.  Most notably, no final investigation report was prepared for more than eleven months.  This deficiency was identified only during the external audit of the annual financial statements.

Following an external investigation in 2025, the employer terminated the claimant’s employment with immediate effect, alternatively with ordinary notice. The claimant challenged both dismissals before the labour court.

The court upheld the ordinary dismissal as socially justified. It found that the claimant had breached essential ancillary duties arising from his senior position. Although a designated compliance officer was formally responsible for processing whistleblower reports, the court emphasised that a group general counsel bears enhanced duties of oversight, control and damage prevention across the organisation.

From the court’s perspective, these duties flow from the employee’s duty of loyalty and the trust inherent in senior leadership roles. They do not require explicit contractual wording. Where deviations from established whistleblowing procedures become apparent - such as the failure to involve mandatory functions or to issue a timely final report - senior leaders are expected to intervene, escalate or otherwise ensure compliance. Passive reliance on other functions was considered insufficient.

The prolonged failure to ensure a compliant investigation process, in a sensitive area with known prior compliance issues, justified the employer’s conclusion that continued employment was no longer reasonable. Given the seriousness of the breach and the claimant’s role, the court held that a prior warning was not required.

By contrast, the summary dismissal was ineffective. The employer failed to comply with the statutory two-week deadline for immediate termination, as the relevant facts were already known once the internal report was finalised. In addition, the court made clear that the alleged shortcomings amounted to deficient performance and organisational failure, which - at least in this case - did not constitute a sufficiently serious breach to justify immediate dismissal.

For international organisations, particularly those managed from outside Germany, the decision carries several important messages:

• First, whistleblowing governance is a senior management issue under German employment law. Group-level legal and compliance leaders can be held personally accountable for failures in oversight, even where day-to-day handling is delegated to specialist functions.
• Second, the decision underscores the importance of timely and properly documented investigation outcomes. A missing or delayed final investigation report is not a technicality; it can be viewed as a substantive compliance failure with direct employment law consequences.
• Third, matrix structures and decentralised compliance models do not dilute responsibility. German courts will look beyond formal role descriptions and assess whether senior leaders exercised appropriate oversight in light of their position, remuneration and access to information.
• Finally, HR and compliance teams should ensure that global whistleblowing frameworks are fully aligned with German legal expectations, including escalation standards, reporting lines and documentation requirements. Treating German whistleblowing obligations as a purely local or procedural matter creates legal risk—both for the organisation and for individuals in senior roles.

In short, the decision makes clear that under German law whistleblowing failures are not merely procedural shortcomings, but can justify the ordinary dismissal of senior legal and compliance leaders where effective oversight, escalation and documentation are lacking, even in complex international group structures.