Kasim Garipoglu has been banned from working in UK financial services. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found he is not fit and proper because of his lack of honesty and integrity.

Mr Garipoglu is the owner of a firm that provided online trading of foreign exchange and contracts.

Between April 2012 and December 2022, including when Mr Garipoglu was the chief executive and director at the firm and an approved person, he repeatedly demonstrated a disregard for regulatory requirements, undermined compliance and anti-money laundering controls, and positively encouraged serious misconduct amongst his colleagues.

He repeatedly overruled those advising him that his instructions were illegal and in breach of regulatory requirements. He consistently prioritised commercial advantage over regulatory requirements, including by regarding the potential for regulatory fines to be a business risk worth taking.

He also deliberately provided false and misleading information to the FCA and other regulators, instructed the forgery of a document to evidence that an employee lived at a UK address with him when neither of them did so, falsified a university degree certificate for himself and made inaccurate declarations to the FCA in an authorisation application for another firm which he owned. In one instance, he instructed a colleague to impersonate him in communications and a phone call to the South African regulator.

In another instance, he had his staff take a required anti-money laundering test on his behalf and passed off the result as his own and later denied this to the FCA.

Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said:

‘Mr Garipoglu has consistently shown a blatant disregard of regulatory requirements and chose to run his business in a way that carried significant risk that serious money laundering would be facilitated. He has consistently sought to evade accountability for this. His conduct fell far below the standards expected of individuals in senior positions. He poses an ongoing risk to consumers and to the integrity of the UK financial system.’

A check by the FX News Group team has shown that Mr Garipoglu is a former director of Trive Financial Services UK Limited. The firm is no longer authorized in the UK, according to the FCA register.