ITALY Law and Practice Contributed by: Alessandro Pistochini, Davide Giorgiadi, Giulia Barattini and Carlotta Scozia, Pistochini Avvocati Studio Legale
brought into the public domain through any medium capable of reaching many people, such as the press, the internet or TV (see Article 15 of the Decree). Reporting through the external channel and public disclosure are allowed only under certain conditions expressly provided for by the Decree in the above-mentioned Articles. A pillar of the whistle-blowing regulations is the extensive system of protections afforded to those who blow the whistle on violations, if the conditions set forth in Article 16 of the Decree are met. It consists of: • protection of the confidentiality of the report - er, the facilitator, the person involved and the persons named in the report, partly by using software protected by cryptographic systems; • prohibition of and protection from possible retaliation by the entity in response to the report, public disclosure or whistle-blowing; • support provided to the whistle-blower by non-profit entities (see 6.5 Incentives Pro- vided to Whistle-Blowers ); • under certain conditions, exemption from liability with respect to the disclosure and dissemination of specific types of informa - tion (see 6.5 Incentives Provided to Whistle- Blowers ); and • restrictions on waivers and settlements involving rights and protections afforded by the Decree. 6.5 Incentives Provided to Whistle- Blowers No incentive is offered to whistle-blowers for reporting bribery or corruption. The only “incentive” (more properly a kind of “protection”) for the whistle-blower is provided
by Article 20 of Legislative Decree No 24/2023, where those who disclose or disseminate infor - mation about violations covered by the obliga - tion of secrecy will not be punishable when, at the time of disclosure, there were reasonable grounds to believe that the disclosure was nec - essary to uncover the violation. Unless the act is a crime, the whistle-blower will not incur any liability for acquiring information on violations or accessing the same. In any case, criminal liability and any other liability shall not be excluded for conduct that is not related to reporting or that is not strictly necessary to disclose the violation. Finally, it is worth highlighting that the Decree provides support via non-profit entities that give information, assistance and free advice on how to report, protection from retaliation, and the terms and conditions of access to legal aid for the person involved (Article 18). Regarding the exonerating circumstance under Article 323-ter ICC in the event of self-incrimi - nation and effective co-operation with the judi - cial authority, see 4.5 Safe Harbour or Amnesty Programme . As mentioned previously, in the Italian jurisdic - tion, the main anti-bribery and anti-corruption provisions are included in the Criminal Code, which describes conduct that may constitute crimes and provides for sanctions. At the same time, Legislative Decree No 231/2001 establishes an autonomous admin - istrative liability for legal entities if one of the crimes listed in the Decree (including bribery and 7. Enforcement Trends 7.1 Enforcement
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