CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank says all its customers who opened accounts after 2007 have already signed on to a client agreement that is the source of controversy.
In a statement issued yesterday, the bank said the correspondence it sent to some customers was “designed to standardise all client mandates” and bring those who
had accounts prior to 2007 to be brought in line.
However, consultant and former banker Senator Tony Marshall has told SATURDAY SUN that the bank “ought to put all the facts on the table and I do not think that it is a matter of their choice”.
According to Marshall, “It must be very frustrating for people who have been customers of the bank for many years, to now be faced with a situation where basically it says ‘this is it’.
“I have a suspicion that Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA) is behind all this. I think that they just have to comply with requirements of the FACTA, so it is obviously left to Government and/or the Central Bank or the Fair Trading Commission to see where we stand, but my suspicion is that we don’t have a leg to stand on as customers and as a country.” (GE)
Please read the full story in today’s SATURDAY SUN, or in the eNATION edition.
