More than 450 investment websites already blocked by Italy’s CONSOB
Italy’s Companies and Exchange Commission (CONSOB) continues to act against fraudulent investment schemes. Today, the regulator announced it had issued orders for the blocking of access to six unauthorized online trading websites.
The list includes four sites of abusive financial intermediators and two sites through which an offer of financial products is made in the absence of a prospectus.
The latest set of orders targets the following websites:
- Tremisa Ltd (https://abbinvest.com);
- Tradixa Ltd (www.tradixa.net);
- E-Planet Trade (https://eplanetrade.com and page https://trade.eplanetrade.com);
- Beradora Ltd (https://timarkets.com and page https://accounts.timarkets.com);
- Bolton Holding Limited and Bolton First Credit Limited (www.bfclcoin.com);
- Niwix Limited (www.niwix.org).
Taking into account the latest additions, the total number of websites blacked out by Consob has risen to 452. Let’s note that just a couple of months ago the number of blocked websites reached 400.
In issuing the orders, Consob made use of the powers deriving from the “Growth Decree” (Law no. 58 of 28 June 2019, Article no. 36, paragraph 2-terdecies), on the basis of which Consob can order Internet service providers to block access from Italy to the websites through which financial services are offered without due authorization. Many of these websites offer CFD, FX and cryptocurrency trading.
A prominent example of a website of a Forex broker blocked in Italy is that of IC Markets. This case also demonstrates that the blocking of a website can have much more serious effect on a business rather than a warning.
The activities for the blocking of the sites by Internet service providers are in progress. For technical reasons, the implementation of the blackout may take a few days.