美国银行检查官特免权(BEP)适用研究

Research on the Practice of Bank Examiner Privilege in the USA

银行检查官特免权,通常被认为用以保护监管机构对金融机构实施检查过程中产生的检查报告和相关的监管材料免受披露,属于作为上位概念的“政府审议程序特免权”中的一类。在主体层面,可以主张银行检查官特免权的主体为监管机构。无论是否处于诉讼程序,监管机构都可以依赖BEP拒绝披露机密监管信息。在诉讼中,如果相关报告属于BEP保护的机密监管信息范围,要求披露机密报告的一方负有证明有正当理由(good cause)的举证责任,法院通常结合富兰克林因素判断最终是否需要披露。尽管BEP对金融监管机构很重要,但美国国会并没有将其编入法规,普通法的性质大大影响了BEP的适用。

The bank examiner privilege is generally considered to protect from dis-closure of the examination reports and related regulatory materials generated by the regulator in the course of examining financial institutions, and this privilege falls into the categories of govern-mental deliberation privilege. By law, the financial regulator can assert the BEP and by doing so relevant regulators shall be protected from disclosure of confidential regulatory information whether or not they are in litigation. In litigation, if the report in question falls within the scope of confidential regulatory information protected by the BEP, the party seeking disclosure of the confi-dential report bears the burden of proving good cause, and the court usually determines whether to override the BEP through Franklin factors test. Despite the importance of the BEP to financial regu-lators, Congress did not codify it in statute, and the common law nature of the BEP greatly affects its application.