OREANDA-NEWS. May 21, 2012. On May 16, 2012, the National Bank of Ukraine and the Bank of Greece signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Area of Banking Supervision. On behalf of the National Bank of Ukraine the Memorandum was signed by Mr. Ihor Sorkin, Deputy Governor, and on behalf of the Bank of Greece – by Mr. Ioannis Papadakis, Deputy Governor.

The Memorandum regulates the issues of cooperation between two supervisory authorities in various areas of banking supervision, including exchange of information about the general state of banking systems and individual banking institutions, cooperation in the process of authorization and licensing of foreign banks’ branches and subsidiaries, conducting off-site supervision and on-site inspections of such institutions for the purpose of consolidated supervision, preventing the use of banks for the legalization of criminal incomes etc. The important provision of this document is the obligation of both parties to ensure the confidentiality of information which is considered to be banking secrecy and its use only for supervisory purposes.

The National Bank of Ukraine has similar bilateral documents on cooperation signed with the supervisory authorities of Armenia, Belarus, China, Cyprus, Hungary, Kirgizia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Poland, the Russian Federation, Sweden and Turkey.