Duties of Refusal, Integrity Risks, Human Rights, and the Environment

Abstract The justification (at least in part) for the statutory duties of refusal discussed in Chapter 2 is, without exception, protection of the weaker party. But this is not always the reason for the existence of statutory duties of refusal in the financial sector. Another purpose of statutory duties of refusal can be to prevent integrity risks wherever possible. Integrity risks include money laundering and terrorist financing, tax evasion, insider trading, fraud, corruption, and violation of financial and economic sanctions. Human rights violations and environmental pollution are not classified as integrity risks (at least not yet). In this chapter, I therefore assume that these risks have a separate status. This is why the title of this chapter explicitly mentions human rights and the environment in addition to integrity risks.