The Lebanese Parliament passed on Thursday the banking secrecy law, a key pre-requisite to unlocking financial assistance by the International Monetary Fund. The law lifts banking secrecy on bank accounts for the past ten years and allows banking supervisory and regulatory bodies to demand access to all information (including customers’ names with the aim of analyzing deposits and their sources) without the need to provide any particular reason. It is worth noting that this is the third attempt by the parliament at amending the banking secrecy law, as the two previous versions were deemed insufficient by the IMF.