The privacy advantage. Austrian bank secrecy laws protect your assets from unauthorized snoops, private investigators, contingency-fee seeking lawyers, even government officials—from prying into your financial affairs. Indeed, the confidenti­ality of Austrian bank accounts is protected by a law with the same legal status as the Aus­trian Constitution! Absent evidence that you have committed a serious crime, Austrian bank secrecy is virtually impenetrable. Compare this to the United States where even mar­keting agencies regularly share your private financial information. In Austria, such con­duct would be deemed criminal and could result in stiff fines or even imprisonment

Financial privacy. The United States has some of the world's laxest privacy laws. For a few dollars, you can perform a search on the Internet to locate your target's home ad­dress, work history, telephone records and even balances in U.S. securities and bank ac­counts. You can slow down this trade in your data, but you can't stop it, especially if it's the government doing the snooping under laws like the USA PATRIOT Act. And financial accounts are notoriously insecure, contributing to an explosion in identity theft. In con­trast, by taking advantage of bank secrecy laws in a country like Austria, you can avoid needless scrutiny of your private financial affairs.

 Bank secrecy. Your financial secrets are safe in an Austrian bank. You can't use your Austrian bank ac­count for criminal purposes, but in all other situations, strict Austrian secrecy laws insure that no information about your account is released without your authoriza­tion. Contrast this to the U.S., where banks may legally release account data to insurance or direct marketing af­filiates, and you have no right to stop them from doing so. In Austria, such conduct would be a criminal of­fense.The tradition of bank secrecy in Austria is thus very different from that in the United States, where information about your bank account can be bought or sold without your knowledge, consent, or compensation. The practical consequence for foreign depositors is that once you've opened an Austrian bank account, your assets are, for practical purposes, "off the radar screen." 

The Austrian bank secrecy law applies to banks, their shareholders, members of executive bodies, employees, and other persons acting for them. None of these persons may disclose or make use of any information of which they become aware or to which they have access solely because of the bank's business relationship with the customer. Any staff member of the bank (or anyone who is otherwise entrusted by the bank, e.g., lawyers, auditors, etc.) who discloses or otherwise makes use of facts subject to banking secrecy commits a criminal offense if it can be shown that the violation was committed to gain a profit or to harm anyone. The obligation to secrecy continues to exist after termination of the contractual relationship, and even after the death of the client. The penalty provided in Section 101(1) of the Banking Act for malicious violations of bank secrecy is imprisonment of up to one year, or a monetary fine. The affected depositor may also sue the offending bank and bank employees involved, up to the amount of actual damages caused by the violation. Anyone else harmed by a violation of bank secrecy may bring a lawsuit to recover damages. Violations of banking secrecy obligations constitute grounds for dismissal of bank employees involved in the breach. An even more severe possible consequence is the with­drawal of the bank's banking license. Bank secrecy may never be lifted directly by a foreign investigative agency or a private in­dividual. However, it is waived in official criminal proceedings, insider trading investigations and "intentional fiscal violations, with the exception of fiscal petty offenses." Another exception to bank secrecy is if a bank notifies authorities, as required under Austrian law, of its suspicions that a client is engaging in "suspicious transactions." Nor does the prohibition apply "if the customer ex­pressly and in writing consents to the disclosure of the secret." Secrecy also doesn't apply in litiga­tion between the bank and one of its clients.

Austrian bank secrecy is comparable in strength to bank secrecy laws in other banking cen­ters such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Panama. It is stronger than secrecy laws in Caribbean banking centers such as the Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands, which have been forced to sign "Tax Exchange Information Agreements" with the United States. Still, because of the increasing exceptions to secrecy, the best way to view a bank account in Austria or any other country with bank secrecy laws is that information will be held "in confidence," but will not neces­sarily remain secret in the event of a criminal investigation.