ST. PETERSBURG, March 18 - RAPSI. The 13th Commercial Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court's ruling on a 20,000 rubles ($650) fine the consumer rights authority imposed on state-controlled Sberbank for violating bank privacy regulations, the Supreme Commercial court said on its website on Monday.

The court ruled in favor of Sberbank's appeal.

The country's biggest lender appealed against a decision passed on December 14 when the St. Petersburg Commercial Court rejected its lawsuit seeking to invalidate a 20,000 rubles ($650) fine imposed by Rospotrebnadzor on October 3.

The consumer rights agency inspected a Sberbank office in September after receiving a private complaint about a disputed cash transaction through an ATM.

It appeared that Sberbank's North-West branch sent a statement including credit card transactions to the wrong email address. The watchdog agency viewed this error as a violation of the confidentiality clause in banking regulations.

The higher court reversed the ruling on the fine stating that sending a report to a client is not a banking service and that the leak of confidential information was not deliberate.