National Discrimination Tribunal prohibited ethnic discrimination in the provision of banking services

National discrimination tribunal press release 22.7.2014

The Ombudsman for Minorities requested the National Discrimination Tribunal to examine whether A had been discriminated against in the provision of banking services and to impose a conditional fine on S-Bank Ltd, because it had not accepted A's Estonian passport as proof of identity.

According to the account given by the petitioner, A had not been issued with online bank identifiers because the Bank had refused to accept his Estonian passport as proof of identity. Based on this, the National Discrimination Tribunal considered that the situation had given rise to a presumption of discrimination.

The Tribunal considered that no legislation or other official instructions prevented the Bank from accepting the petitioner's Estonian passport as proof of identity.

The Bank had not stated that it had any reason to doubt the authenticity of the petitioner's identity document. The Bank's conduct had been based on instructions which gave rise to distinction based on ethnic origin.

According to the reasoning of the Bank, persons from foreign countries represent, as a rule, a higher risk of money laundering and terrorist financing, which entitled the Bank to require that citizens of EU/EEA countries present a Finnish identity document. Such approach, however, is discriminatory and has no legal basis. The Bank’s instructions did not specify when and on what grounds these requirements would apply.

A general starting point in the Bank's identification principles was that it would only accept a passport or an identity card issued by Finnish authorities in the granting of online bank identifiers.

The National Discrimination Tribunal deemed the Bank's conduct to be indirect discrimination.

The Tribunal further considered that the Bank's general identification instructions were open to interpretation and could therefore result in direct or indirect discrimination. The Tribunal prohibited the Bank from continuing or repeating its conduct in breach of section 6 of the Non-Discrimination Act in respect of A or anyone else. In order to enforce compliance with its injunction, the Tribunal imposed a conditional fine of EUR 5,000.

The full case report is available in Finnish on the Tribunal's website at www.syrjintalautakunta.fi

For further information, please contact: Rapporteur of the Tribunal Juhani Kortteinen, tel. +358 295 488 680, e-mail: [email protected]