Access of law enforcement bodies to commercial and banking secret limited

Certain modifications have been introduced into a number of normative acts, in particular, the Law on Financial Institutions, the Law on Police, the Law on the Centre for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption, the Law on the Prosecutor's Office with respect to the access by the law enforcement bodies to commercial and banking secret.

The adopted amendments have limited the access to commercial and banking secret for police officers, the Centre for Combating Economic Crimes and Corruption and the Prosecutor's Office. Previously, the access by these bodies to the information that constituted the secret of banking institutions and commercial companies was virtually unlimited and could be obtained even in the course of ordinary police inspections on matters not directly related to the subject-matter of the inspection. However, from now on they will only be able to request and receive such information in case of criminal investigation proceedings launched and with the permission of a criminal prosecution judge.

There have been increased the penalties for disclosure of commercial and banking secret. In particular, the penalty imposed on public officials that disclose commercial, banking or tax secret will now amount to 8,000 to 10,000 lei.

Article 22 of the Law on Financial Institutions has been adopted in the new version and now provides for a clear list of cases in which the bank must provide the information constituting banking secret, as well as situations in which the provision of information by the bank does not infringe its duty to preserve banking secret.

This post is part of the newsletter prepared by our law firm. You can download its full text in .pdf from here.