Tax authorities will demand from banks information about customers' accounts
The Tax Code gave the right to the tax authorities to obtain from banks certificates and copies of documents on the existence of bank accounts. Tatyana Zamorskaya, an expert on KPMG, has analyzed what information about the client and on whose requests she can go outside the bank, the "Delo" newspaper writes. For Ukrainian banks and their clients, the issue of preserving the confidentiality of information constituting bank secrecy is urgent. Naturally, when opening an account with the bank and later when carrying out operations by the bank on the client's accounts, the bank becomes available to the data. Therefore, both the bank and the client are not interested in access to such information received by third parties.
At the same time, Ukrainian legislation stipulates that a number of public authorities have the right to access this information in the exercise of their functions. According to the provisions of Ukrainian legislation, namely Article 60 of the Law "On Banks and Banking Activity" No. 2121-III, banking secrecy is information about the activities and financial condition of a customer that has become known to a bank in the process of servicing a client or dealing with him when providing bank services and the disclosure of which can cause material and moral damage to the client. At the same time, according to the provisions of Article 62 of the Banking Act, the bank is required to disclose information containing bank secrecy at the request of a number of state bodies - in particular, the prosecutor's office, the Security Service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, tax authorities, the State Financial Monitoring Committee. Among the mentioned state bodies, the most burdensome for banks, in terms of providing information, is financial monitoring. In this procedure, banks, among other things, are required to implement a number of internal administrative measures, as well as to identify and collect information about certain financial transactions of their clients that meet the criteria of "suspicious" transactions. In August 2010, the Law "On Prevention and Counteraction to the Legalization of Proceeds from Crime or Financing of Terrorism" No. 249-IV was amended, which significantly expanded the list of operations subject to compulsory financial monitoring. So, financial monitoring to date, among other things, subject to sale and purchase transactions of real estate, operations for the management of client assets, management of a bank account or securities account, to raise funds for the creation of legal entities and other transactions. According to the provisions of Article 6 of the Law on Financial Monitoring, subjects of initial financial monitoring, upon request of the State Financial Monitoring Committee, must provide additional information concerning financial transactions that have become subject to financial monitoring, including one that is a banking or commercial secret.
Moreover, Article 12 of the Law on Financial Monitoring stipulates that the provision of such information to the Gosfinmonitoring is not a violation of professional secrecy, secrecy of insurance, banking or commercial secrecy. This provision contradicts the provisions of Article 62 of the Law on Banks and Banking Activities, which provides for the disclosure of bank secrecy and establishes certain limits in the issue of disclosure of information about customers. In addition to Gosfinmonitoring, the tax authorities also have the right to access banking secrecy.
According to subclause 20.1.3. of Article 20 of the Tax Code, the bodies of the State Tax Service have the right to receive from banks and other financial institutions certificates and copies of documents on the existence of bank accounts, and on the basis of a court decision - information on the volume and turnover of funds in the accounts. Banks, for their part, also have certain legal tools to protect the legitimate rights and interests of their clients. If the bank believes that the requirement of the state body to provide information that is a bank secret is presented with abuse of authority or with violation of the established procedure, it has the right to appeal against the actions of such state body in a judicial procedure.
