CONSOB has blacklisted 871 illegal financial websites in three years
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The Italian financial market regulator, the Italian Companies and Exchange Commission (CONSOB) has blocked more websites providing services in the country without proper registration. CONSOB has ordered internet service providers in Italy to block access to websites from five financial service companies providing services to Italians without authorization.
CONSOB blocks five illegal websites
The statement issued by CONSOB has said that the blockage of these five websites could take several days before coming into effect. The blocked websites claimed to offer services related to financial assets such as forex and securities.
The blocked websites include Aquilafx, EuroCryptoFX, Pine Consulting LTD eBestProducts Limited, MTinvesting, and MFS Securities Corporation. These platforms operate a main website and related pages. These websites will soon be inaccessible to Italians because of the blockage that Italian regulators have imposed.
CONSOB has been blocking websites not authorized to operate in Italy to ensure that these sites are not accessible to Italians. CONSOB was authorized to take down websites under Italy’s Growth Decree. The regulator can take down websites that offer financial services illegally in Italy.
The Italian regulator started implementing the provision of this law in July 2019. The regulator has since blocked 871 illegal trading websites operating in Italy. These websites have been blocked in the last three years.
The regulator further said that investors must be cautious in using due diligence to make informed investment decisions. Investors needed to ensure that the platforms that they were interacting with were regulated to operate in Italy and that they published a prospectus on their operations.
The statement further said that “Consob draws investors’ attention to the importance of adopting the greatest diligence in order to make informed investment choices, adopting common sense behaviors, essential to safeguard their savings: these include, for websites that offer financial services, checking in advance that the operator with whom they are investing is authorized, and, for offers of financial products, that a prospectus has been published.”
Europe regulators crack down on illegal trading platforms
Italian market regulator CONSOB has been actively cracking down on illegal websites. The regulator started cracking down on illegal sites in July 2019. It has continued relentlessly taking regulatory action against these illegal sites and blacklisting unauthorized online trading platforms.
In March this year, the regulator said they blocked five more websites. The websites blocked during the month include CatenaFarmCapital, EaglestonesFinance, EuropeanFX Markets Limited, Plan B Ltd, and ToroProfit.
CONSOB is not the only European regulator weeding out platforms offering services illegally. Other European regulators have also been actively cracking down on illegal trading avenues.
In March, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) blacklisted six online trading platforms. The blacklisted sites include 21stfinance.net, eurotradeforex.com, and pitbulls-markets.com. At the time, the Cypriot regulator warned that the six websites did not have proper authorizations to offer investment services in the country.
