The High Court of Justice of the Basque Country has upheld the dismissal of a Kutxabank employee based in Hondarribia for accessing customers’ financial records without authorization. The worker said he acted out of “simple curiosity” and wanted to know how much people earned, according to the account of the case.
The investigation began after a director at ArcelorMittal learned that her banking information might have been viewed. She was the only member of the company’s management committee with an account at Kutxabank and reported her concerns through the bank’s ethics channel. Kutxabank opened an internal audit in January 2025.
Computer records showed that the employee had accessed confidential information on seven separate days between January 2021 and March 2025. The court accepted that he had looked up data relating to at least three ArcelorMittal employees, as well as seven other customers whose names were similar. The information included income, account transactions, mortgages, guarantees and card activity.
The employee argued that access to the bank’s systems was tolerated and denied sharing information with his wife. The court said the central issue was not whether he had passed the data on, but whether he was entitled to access it. Bank employees are bound by a strict duty of confidentiality, the judges said, and technical access does not amount to permission. His experience in the role, which he had held since July 2008, was not considered a mitigating factor.
The Social Chamber rejected his appeal against a first-instance ruling issued in April 2026. Its judgment, dated October 20, leaves open the possibility of an appeal to Spain’s Supreme Court to unify legal doctrine. The court did not order him to pay costs.
Sources: Xataka.