SUMMARY

Claim against denial of access to the information sent by banking entities according to regulations for the prevention of money laundering.

A company filed a letter with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation requesting access to all the information that banking entities provide: BANKIA, BBVA and CAIXA, has been provided to the Bank of Spain in relation to compliance with the regulations on the prevention of money laundering and which, among others, obliges them to report operations suspected of being related to money laundering or the financing of terrorism.

The Administration denied access since, under the First Additional Provision, paragraph 2 of LTAIBG, the specific access regulations contained in the Money Laundering Act are applicable, which shares the nature of Article 95 of Law 58/2003, of 17 December, General Taxation (LGT), and, in any case, providing the aforementioned information would be detrimental to the prevention, investigation and punishment of criminal, administrative or disciplinary offences – Article 14.1 e)-.

When a complaint was filed, the Transparency and Good Governance Council considered it, since neither the Money Laundering Act nor the LGT have a specific access regime to information and since the damage invoked has not been duly proven either in the Access Resolution or in the allegations made in the complaint file. However, this information must be allowed to exclude information that, in a justified and proportionate manner, is covered by the limit invoked, since it affects, according to the circumstances of the specific case, the correct development of the work of prevention, investigation and punishment of illegal acts in the affected matter.