If you have recently received a subpoena from a government agency investigating a customer’s financial dealings, you are not alone. As the alarm and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic finally begin to calm, audits and investigations concerning the use of funds from pandemic relief initiatives such as the Paycheck Protection Program, Main Street Lending Program, and others are in full swing, sometimes followed by civil and criminal charges.
Once you have established that the subpoena is legitimate, what do you do with it? Banks are accustomed to cooperating with government requests and investigations, but banks are limited in what customer information they can disclose (even to the government) without following the proper procedures – namely, those established by the Right to Financial Privacy Act (RFPA).