Abstract

This article synthetically summarizes studies on the legal institution of banking secrecy, being one of so-called banking privileges, broken down into such key issues as: legal basis for the duty to observe banking secrecy; identification of protected values; what information is covered by secrecy; period of protection (how long secrecy is to be observed); entities protected by secrecy and their disposal rights concerning protected information, including the right to waive protection or disclose information to other persons; as well as who is obliged to observe secrecy; It should be stressed at the same time that although banking secrecy is a subject recognized in both Polish legal literature and in the Polish case law, the essence of this legal mechanism and its topicality in relation to the contemporary market phenomena allows for assuming that banking secrecy gives and will continue to give rise to a number of interpretational doubts related to the practice of legal transactions.