Financial Information Leaking Out

As central government agencies such as the National Tax Service, the judiciary and the prosecution, and local governments get information on millions of financial transactions from banks, personal financial information is leaking out.

According to banking circles on Sunday, government offices requested data on a total of three million financial transactions. They say handling with the information costs more than 10 billion won and that this burden is placed on banks, not on government offices which requested the information. In some cases too many bank employees are reportedly mobilized to the job, putting banks’ own functions to the back burner.

Woori Bank received requests on personal financial information in some 300,000 cases from Seoul City government and other government offices. Against this backdrop, the back designated a group of computer workers to respond to requests of financial transaction information.

According to the Finance and Economy Committee of the National Assembly, 15 local banks offered information on as many as 3,102,000 transactions from the second half of 2001 to the first half of 2002.

In addition, due to mismanagement of government offices, some information is reported to have been flowed into private lenders.

Bank officials say, "Banks are permitted to confirm whether a particular transaction has occurred and give information of transactions before and after that one. However, in most cases, the government offices request the whole data about an account."

Banks asked those government agencies to pay handling fees and to refrain from requesting too much information. However, in response, government agencies are filing lawsuits, citing their "right to request information on financial transactions."

"First, it is a problem that government agencies violate the law for convenience’ sake. The bigger problem is that such personal information can be disclosed to those with evil intention," a high-ranking banking official said on condition of anonymity.

It is pointed out that the revision of related laws should be made and that government agencies should have a sense of ethics to protect personal credit information.

Kwu-Jin Lim Chi-Young Shin mhjh22@donga.com higgledy@donga.com