BankTrack | Challenging banks on client confidentiality

Some of the world’s biggest banks are routinely hiding behind client confidentiality to conceal investments in companies and projects that infringe human and environmental rights, the first study of its kind reveals today. BankTrack, which campaigns to hold commercial banks accountable, publishes analysis of five years of correspondence with 31 major international banks regarding problematic projects they finance. It finds that in nearly half of all responses (70 of 150), banks said they could not comment on whether they had a relationship with a particular customer or project. Half of those responses cited client confidentiality as the reason.