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'.
was that the chen shui bian case ?