Why not fully lift the banking secrecy?

Many banks asked this question in response to those who ask about banks' silence regarding lifting bank secrecy from accounts.

However, Judge Ghada Aoun demanded to see the activity of these accounts with retroactive effect since 2016.

Some banking sources said they were surprised Judge Aoun asked for accounts to be disclosed based on suspicion of money laundering to justify its request to lift banking secrecy.

But she was unaware that the judiciary's announcement of such a suspicion could result in correspondent banks ceasing their cooperation with the suspected bank and depriving the Lebanese of the possibility of opening credits for imports from abroad.

Furthermore, banking sources considered Judge Aoun's request for data dating back to 2016 was against the law, and it allows the stakeholders to file a lawsuit against the bank if the latter discloses their accounts.

The same sources also explained that the most dangerous thing is that the accusation of money laundering might be linked to the financial engineering conducted by Banque du Liban (BDL). This means that the suspicion revolves around money paid by BDL to banks, which places BDL on suspicion of money laundering. 

Moreover, this matter will accelerate the correspondent banks' decision to boycott the financial sector in Lebanon, including BDL.

These sources then called for the bank secrecy law to be eliminated and to allow access to all accounts.

In this way, a judge does not have to accuse a bank of money laundering to justify the demand to disclose specific accounts, and all matters become fully transparent and exposed.

However, this is a healthy and beneficial matter.

Thus, we may know where the money that caused the $73 billion gap in BDL went.