Swiss Regulator Rails on SWIFT

Cory Levine, Wall Street & Technology

Swiss banks have been accused of breaking their country’s laws on data privacy, a charge that stems from their involvement in the SWIFT data-sharing debacle that was first exposed in June. According to a Finextra report, Switzerland’s federal data protection commissioner, Hanspeter Thür, claimed Swiss banks broke national data protection laws by not informing customers of that transaction information would be shared via the SWIFT network.

The U.S. Treasury used its authority to gain access to data traveling over the SWIFT network in order to monitor terrorist financing. SWIFT has defended its own compliance standards, asserting that as a multinational organization, its subjection to the U.S. government was unavoidable.

The Belgian Data Privacy Commission, however, has declared that SWIFT broke Belgian and EU data protection laws.

Posted by Cory Levine at 10:10 AM

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