A BANK here has been ordered by the Court of Appeal to disclose
details of a customer's account to the Attorney-General (AG).
The AG had asked for the information on behalf of a foreign
government, which is conducting a criminal probe into the account
holder.
In an earlier ruling, the High Court had rejected the request.
It said then that it could not be sure that the details sought by
the AG were the same as those wanted by the foreign government.
This was because the request had not been produced in court.
However, in a written judgment released yesterday, Chief Justice
Chan Sek Keong said the issue was not whether the request should be
shown to the court, but whether the laws relevant to its approval
had been followed.
The court noted that such requests are screened first by the AG
and then the Home Affairs Minister under prescribed procedures. It
said that a 'red flag' should not go up just because the request
was not produced to the court.
'This screening process is a useful means to balance the
competing public interests of financial confidentiality and privacy
on the one hand, and on the other hand, ensuring that Singapore is
not a haven for money laundering,' said CJ Chan.
Lawyers said the case was significant as it was rare for the
courts to order banks to disclose account details.
Doing so, they said, sends a signal that Singapore is willing to
set aside a bank's need to preserve confidentiality in order to
fight transnational crime and prevent money laundering.
Details of the foreign government, the bank and the account
holder were not disclosed in the judgment.
The foreign government, which was probing a case of criminal
conspiracy and fraud, had requested the full bank records of the
customer since the account was opened in 2000.
The request was made under the Mutual Assistance in Criminal
Matters Act, which is meant to facilitate assistance in criminal
investigations between countries.
Noting that the High Court judge had also questioned whether the
AG had asked for more items than the foreign government had
requested, the Court of Appeal ruled that this was confusing the
scope of the request with the scope of the application.
'If the request seeks the production of five items of
information from a bank, and the AG's application seeks the
production of eight items of information, there is nothing wrong
with the request, but there is something wrong with the
application,' said the Chief Justice.
The court noted that the judge had not doubted there was a
request. It said the police officer handling the case had submitted
an affidavit and 'there was no reason for the judge to take upon
himself the task of having to verify whether the AG had sought more
or less information than that requested by the requesting
state'.
By
K.C. Vijayan, Law Correspondent