CIBC chief executive John Hunkin told CIBC customers on Tuesday that they would be "fully reimbursed" for any losses incurred from the glitch that sent confidential faxes to an American scrapyard operator.

"I want to personally apologize and convey to you my concern regarding a failure in safeguarding the confidentiality of customer information,'' Hunkin said in a letter to customers, which is posted on the CIBC website.

He said that any breaches of privacy were "unacceptable" and outlined a series of steps that were taken to rectify the situation.

Hunkin wrote that the CIBC fax number had been taken out of service and that bank branches were instructed to stop the transmission of internal faxes containing customer information.

The fight over faxes mistakenly sent to the American scrapyard operator has now entered the courts, where the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is alleging the operator deliberately leaked confidential customer data.

A report published Tuesday in The Globe and Mail says CIBC made the allegations against Wade Peer in court filings Monday.

The brief issued by CIBC lawyers says: "Mr. Peer provided The Globe and Mail (a mass publication Toronto newspaper) and the Canadian television network CTV with confidential financial information about CIBC's customers either from his own copies of the faxes or, as Peer now claims, from the materials his counsel had already placed on this court's website.

"(Mr. Peer and AllStar) have already shown that they will misuse CIBC's confidential customer information. … None of this conduct can possibly be justified as a matter of fairness or common sense.''

Kathryn Goldman, Peer's lawyer, adamantly denied that either she or Peer had provided anyone with confidential information. In an interview with The Globe, Goldman said the confidential documents were either shredded, or are being kept in a locked filing cabinet.

The CIBC allegations come just days after the bank thanked Peer for attempting to "protect the confidentiality of this information.''

But on Monday, lawyers for CIBC asked a Baltimore court to order Peer to hand over any faxes from the bank he has received in error, or receives in the future.

Peer said he has received hundreds of faxes from CIBC since July 2001, which were mistakenly sent by the bank to his business, AllStar Sportsline Properties.

He claims that the volume of faxes prevented him from doing business, and as a result, his company failed. Now Peer is seeking $3 million US in damages from the bank.

In another statement on its website, CIBC says that as soon as it learned of the problem, in 2002, it immediately notified branches about the incorrect fax number.

It also asked Peer to shred the documents and let them know if the faxes continued.

"We heard nothing further regarding this issue from the individual for more than two years and thus believed that the company was no longer receiving CIBC faxes in error," the company said.

"However, in the spring of 2004, the company filed a lawsuit against CIBC stating that they had received CIBC faxes through 2002. Then, late last month, the company informed us for the first time that it had been receiving faxes up to 2004."