Supreme Court Confirms Requirements for Disclosure of Bank Secrecy Information at the Request of a Tax Authority

Access by state authorities to information constituting bank secrecy is permitted only where the conditions established by law are met. The Supreme Court, sitting as part of the panel of judges of the Second Judicial Chamber of the Civil Court of Cassation, considered case No. 501/4276/25 (judgment dated 12 August 2026), which concerned the sufficiency of grounds for disclosing bank secrecy information at the request of a regulatory authority, which justified the relevant necessity by the need to conduct a documentary unscheduled tax audit.

Legal issue concerned whether the mere necessity of conducting a tax audit could in itself constitute sufficient grounds for the disclosure of bank secrecy information. In this case, the lower courts dismissed the application because the tax authority had failed to prove that it was impossible to conduct the audit in accordance with the procedure established by law. The Supreme Court agreed with this conclusion, emphasizing the need to properly substantiate the circumstances that prevent the application of procedures provided for by tax legislation.

The Supreme Court panel did not depart from previously established legal positions, but confirmed and applied the established approach. The Court noted that a single visit to the taxpayer's registered tax address, the absence of a response from the police authority to a request to establish the taxpayer's location, as well as the failure to provide evidence of proper delivery of a copy of the order to conduct the audit, do not in themselves indicate that the audit cannot be conducted.