Bioko Accountancy & Advisory (“BAA”, We/Us, including capitalized) values your business and we know your privacy is paramount to you. We are committed to protecting your privacy; thus, we have implemented this Privacy Policy to inform you of the information that we collect from you, how we collect it and what we do with it.
Except where stated otherwise in this policy, BAA is the data controller in relation to the personal data it receives. This Policy may be amended from time to time because of changes in legislation or our practices, so we recommend that you review this page intermittently to observe any changes.
What personal information we collect
BAAmay process information received directly or from a third party:
This may include:
- Personal details such as your given name(s) and preferred name,
- Your contact information e.g. email and postal mailing address, telephone number
- Your demographic information e.g. age/date of birth, nationality, education, any language preferences
- Identification documents such as passport, bank statements or national identity number.
- Financial information such as payment details, bank account details, billing address, BACS and SWIFT.
- Instructions on your case and matter details: any data we process in the course of providing legal services; including correspondence documents, evidence, transaction documents
- Technical data such as your IP address, browser type, language settings, browser settings, dates and times you access the site, broad geographic information,
- Website usage/interaction with content on site: your interaction with our content, pages visited, and online adverts are recorded.
- When you visit our offices: CCTV footage, details of meetings, information relating to signing you into the building and records of meetings or events attended
- In our capacity as your employer, we process the details pertaining to your previous employer, such as name, address, email address and telephone number.
How and when we collect information
BAA collects “personal” information from you when you:
- Sign up to receive a newsletter, legal alert and/or business insights;
- Seek legal advice from us or make any other consultation;
- Provide us with information for Know Your Customer (KYC) processes;
- Attend seminars and training sessions; or
- Provide us with a service.
- Furnish us with your business card at meetings or events
We also collect information from third party sources:
- when we carry out our KYC obligations
- interact with government organisations in relation to you and on your behalf
- from publicly available sources such as sanctions list, company registers, electoral registers
What we do with your Information
The personal information that you give us when you use the BAA website is used to process and fulfil that reason for which it was provided.
We use your personal information for:
- the provision of legal advice or other services requested by you;
- To comply with other legal regulations such as record keeping and disclosure requirements;
- complying with legal and regulatory obligations, including but not limited to conducting KYC and reporting to regulators;
- our own internal purposes, such as providing customer support or providing, maintaining, evaluating and improving our products and services;
- internal purposes such as processing transactions (this may entail sharing general information about you with our alliance partners; and
- to help diagnose problems with our server and to administer our website. Where you have provided us your consent we may provide you information about new features, new services, and special offers we think you will find valuable. If you take advantage of special offers made by our marketing partners, we may, with your consent, transfer your personal information to them.
Disclosure of Personal Data to Third Parties
We may disclose your personal information when required by law, with our processors, when we have in good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process, with any company that acquires our business, with advertising third party providers and external consultants that may use the Information only for the purposes for which they are contracted. We may also disclose your data, to professional advisors to BAA such as auditors, accountants and legal advisors; when information is requested by regulatory bodies in the event of suspected or actual breaches of regulation; to law enforcement agencies in the event it is required to establish, exercise or defend legal rights.
Data transfer and storage
This website is operated by BAA, a company registered under the laws of Equatorial Guinea. In addition to Equatorial Guinea, your personal and non- personal information may be transferred to a cloud system and/or any other server that BAA may use from to time. In addition, we may also electronically transfer your Personal Data to recipients and 3rd party processors in other countries.
How we protect your information
The security of your personal information is very important to us. Taking into account the state of the art, the cost of implementation and taking into account the state of the art, the costs of implementation and the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing as well as the risk of varying likelihood and severity for the rights and freedoms of natural persons, BAA has implemented appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal informational held on data subjects from accidental and unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure and access. While we protect the personal information submitted to us by you we cannot guarantee the security of information during transmission via the internet as the internet is an open source and thus not completely secure. Such transmission is at your own risk and you are required to ensure that any transfer is done securely.
Data Retention
Procedures are implemented to ensure that the personal data we collect is for a specified, explicit and legitimate purpose and will not be processed further in a manner that is incompatible with the purpose for which the data was collected. The information will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed. However, we are obliged to retain the information to satisfy legal, regulatory and reporting requirement and thus your data will be stored to satisfy our legal obligation and for the defence of a claim where necessary. Subject to applicable law certain rights are provided regarding the processing of your personal data. Details of your rights are set out below:
- The right to be informed – at the heart of privacy legislation is the need for transparency in how we use your personal data. You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your data.
- Right to access personal data – you are entitled to a copy of the information we hold about you and how we process it.
- Right to rectification – You also have the right to have your information rectified if the information we hold is incorrect or incomplete. Please advise us of any changes to your information to ensure your data remains accurate and up to date.
- Right of erasure – also known as “the right to be forgotten” is not an absolute right but places an obligation on us to consider whether we can delete your information
- Right to restrict our processing – in certain circumstances you have the right to prohibit the processing your personal data.
- Right to data portability – To stop unauthorised transfers of your personal information to a third party and, in some circumstances, to have personal information relating to you transferred to another organisation.
- Right to object to processing – If you object to the processing of your personal information, or if you have provided your consent to processing and you later choose to withdraw it, we will respect that choice in accordance with our legal obligations. Please note your objection or withdrawal of consent could result in us being unable to carry out the required processing to meet our objective and thus you may not be able to make use of our services. To the extent required by law, we may still process your personal data to meet our legal and regulatory obligations and in exercising and defending our legal rights.
- You may also have the right to lodge a complaint in relation to BAA processing of your personal information with a local supervisory authority.
- Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling – you have a right not to be subject to a decision which is based solely on automated processing, including profiling where the decision will produce a legal effect or a similarly significant effect on you.
You can exercise your right at any time by contacting us at info@biokoaccountancy.com. You may be required to provide information to confirm your identity ensuring you are entitled to access to the data. We may also contact you to seek further clarification in relation to your request which can also aid in speeding up our response time. We endeavour to respond to all legitimate requests within one calendar month. We will notify and keep you updated if your query is particularly complex and may take longer than one calendar month.
Your choice to opt-out of certain communications
If you are no longer interested in receiving e-mail announcements and other marketing information from us, please e-mail your request to info@biokoaccountancy.com. Please include your complete name, e-mail address. Note that you may still receive customer service-related communications from us.
We link to Other Websites
Our website may contain links to web sites operated by other companies. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other web sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of such other websites. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by our website.
Third-Party Advertising
BAA may use a third-party company to serve ads on our behalf across the Internet and at times on this site. They may collect anonymous information about your visits to our website, and your interaction with our products and services. They may also use information about your visits to this and other websites to target advertisements for services. No personally identifiable information is collected or used in this process. They do not know the name, phone number, address, email address, or any personally identifying information about the user.
Children’s Privacy
BAA’s services are intended for users ages 18 and older, unless those under 18 years of age are represented by a person of legal age. Accordingly, we will not knowingly collect or use any personal information from persons that we know to be under the age of 18. In addition, we will delete any information in our database that we know originates from a child under the age of 18.
Updating your personal information
If your personal information changes, you may correct, update or remove personal information previously provided to us by contacting us.
Changes to our Privacy Policy
If we change our Privacy Policy, we will post a new version on our website, which will become effective when posted. The new policy will apply to all current and past users of the Website and will replace any prior policies that are inconsistent with it. If you contract our legal services, BAA’s terms and conditions will apply and we would be bound professionally and contractually to keep all information (as defined by the contract) as strictly confidential.
Contact Us
If you ever have any questions regarding our privacy policy, please contact our data protection officer Abraham Abia at management@biokoaccountancy.com
This privacy policy was last updated on the 29th of June 2023.