CySEC | FinTelegram News

Category: CySEC

February 24, 2021

Post-Brexit! FCA scam warning against CySEC-regulated Brokereo

The UK FCA has issued a warning against Brokereo and qualified it as a possible scam. The operator is Concorde Investments (Cyprus) Ltd, registered in Cyprus and regulated by CySEC under license number 189/13. The domain www.brokero.com is also approved by CySEC. However, during our review, we found problems with the KYC/AML procedures of the broker. Among others, Sepaga E.M.I. Ltd in Cyprus acts as a payment facilitator.

January 23, 2021

EU regulators’ problems with CySEC and its investment firms

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) suspended the EU license passporting rules and banned several CySEC-regulated Ínvestment Firms (CIF). Among them Magnum FX, Rodeler, Hoch Capital, and F1Markets. Roy Almagor's two firms - Maxigrid and Maxiflex voluntarily withdrew before the FCA blocked them. The Italian Consob has already blocked some CySEC CIFs from the Italian market before the FCA. Now a problem is also looming from Spain's CNMV as per a CySEC circular. Truth is, that CySEC and its CIFs have long been an issue for EU regulators.

December 11, 2020

Money for Cyprus! Maxiflex had to pay €370,000 for possible compliance violations

Maxiflex had to make a payment of €370,000 to the Treasury of the Republic of Cyprus. Reasonable people would call this a penalty payment but CySEC prefers the term settlement payment. As always, the CySEC remains very vague in its statement and does not really explain what potential violation Maxiflex might have committed. Lately, Almagor's Maxiflex and Maxigrid have been facilitated in broker scams and saw their bank accounts with GlobalNetInt terminated.

November 26, 2020

CySEC confirms crypto regulation – What it means for Maxigrid and BitandBuy!

Maxigrid Ltd is a regulated Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) and has made its crypto platform - as well as its bank accounts with GlobalNetint - available to scammers and acted as a payment processor for them. The Financial Ombudsman Service of the Republic of Cyprus purported that the CySEC would not regulate crypto assets. Apparently, it does. The CySEC has issued a guideline on how CIFs should deal with crypto.

November 21, 2020

CySEC-regulated brokerage Coverdeal Holdings renounces license

Many of CySEC-regulated CIFs operate scams through offshore companies, using the CySEC CIF license to pretend seriousness. Admittedly, not all CySEC CIFs are engaged in scams but quite a lot are. In this respect, it is good news for investor protection if CySEC companies withdraw. Coverdeal Holdings Limited has done so, renounced its CIF license 231/14, and terminated its respective activities.

November 7, 2020

IC Markets blocked by CONSOB and thrown out by Inter Milan

In June 2020 IC Markets signed a sponsorship deal with Inter Milan. Under the agreement, approximately €14 million was payable to Seria A club over a 3-year period. This was reported by the FX News Group. In October 2020 Inter Milan terminated the agreement. IC Markets is said to have failed to make the promised payments on time and, moreover, the blocking of IC Markets for the Italian market by CONSOB allegedly also played a role in the termination.

October 21, 2020

EU Commission takes action against Cyprus and Malta’s Golden Passports Schemes

EU passports are highly prized as they give their owners the right to travel, live, and work freely in all 27 members of the union. Unfortunately, some countries such as Cyprus and Malta sell citizenships and thus EU passports as part of investment programs for the sole benefit of these countries. Most recently, Al Jazeera has revealed that Cyprus is also offering its "Golden Passports" scheme to convicted criminals and money launderers. Now the EU is finally intervening.

October 11, 2020

Lessons from BitMEX Case – Arrests, warrants, and bribing regulators with coconuts

The U.S. Prosecutors charge the BitMex founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, Samuel Reed along with the senior manager Gregory Dwyer with (a) violating the Bank Secrecy Act and (b) conspiring to violate the Bank Secrecy Act, by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an anti-money laundering (“AML”) program at the crypto exchange or BitMEX. The charges each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

October 10, 2020

CySEC Scam Tourism – The ‘Blank Pages Approach’ of Financial Ombudsman Cyprus!

Andreas Koufkis is for sure an honorable businessman. He is one of the seven members of the Board of Directors of The Financial Ombudsman of the Republic of Cyprus. By his business genes, Koufkis is not on the consumer side. Being the General Manager of Atlantis Securities Ltd, a company registered in Cyprus and licensed by CySEC (CIF 005/03) he can not be regarded as a consumer advocate. Only one director, Loucas Aristodemou, is representing consumers as President of the CyprusConsumers Union and Quality of Life.

October 9, 2020

Maxigrid Case – Open Letter to CySEC chairwoman and Europol

FinTelegram and EFRI have sent an open letter concerning Maxigrid and the related broker scams like RoyalsFX or LincolnFX (to name only two) to Demetra Kalogerou, chairwoman of CySEC, and Europol. The claim of The Financial Ombudsman Service of the Republic of Cyprus that CySEC would not be responsible for the crypto activities of the investment firms they regulate is wrong in our view. In addition, Maxigrid also handled bank deposits for scams hance was involved in fraudulent FIAT transactions too.

October 8, 2020

Maxigrid Case – Cyprus Financial Ombudsman confirms regulatory violations but doesn’t care!

Cyprus is really dark territory within the regulatory regimes in the EU. In plain sight, CySEC-regulated investment firms operate scams and/or facilitate them with their financial services. As in the case of Roy Almagor's Maxigrid and its meanwhile vanished BitandBuy crypto investment platform. Even the Financial Ombudsman Office has found that Maxigrid has violated regulatory requirements. However, the office does not feel responsible for customer complaints for very strange reasons.

September 25, 2020

CySEC Tourism – More scams and victims of Maxigrid’s BitandBuy fraud facilitator identified

Sometime in April 2020, the discussion with Maxigrid started. A customer lost several hundred thousand Euros via the broker Scam RoyalsFX. He had made the deposits on the instructions of RoyalsFX via the BitandBuy crypto platform of the CySEC-regulated Maxigrid. He lost everything and involved FinTelegram in the complaint and shortly afterward BitandBuy disappeared without a trace. However, more scams and victims appeared after our Request 4 Information in June 2020.