Italy’s Companies and Exchange Commission (CONSOB) has blocked advertisements for abusive financial services distributed via the Internet.

The ads improperly leveraged the image of prominent figures in the Italian institutional world, such as the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, as well as the image of a well recognizable brand such as Eni, to promote the initiatives of unauthorized intermediaries online through two websites.

The intervention is the first case of application of the new powers given to Consob by the “Capital Law,” under which the Financial Markets Regulatory and Supervisory Authority can order telecommunications service operators to black out sites that disseminate advertising campaigns related to abusive financial services, i.e., without authorization.

Consob also ordered the blocking of access to four other abusive financial intermediation sites, exercising the powers of the 2019 “Growth Decree.”

The blocked websites are:

• “Meloniprogettodaiuto.com” (website https://meloniprogettodaiuto.com)
• “Clickafino.com” (website https://clickafino.com);
• “Flowtradey” (website www.flowtradey.com);
• “Activmarkets-it” (website https://activmarkets-it.com and related pages https://clientarea.activinv.com and https://webtrader.activinv.com);
• “Ecasset.cm” (website https://ecasset.cm and related page https://client.ecasset.cm);
• “Go Trade Tech” (website https://gotradetech.com and related pages https://panel.gotradetech.com and trading.gotradetech.com ).

The number of total websites blocked since July 2019, when the Authority got the power to order that the websites of fraudulent financial intermediaries be blacked out, has thus risen to 1194.

Activities are underway to black out the above-mentioned websites. For technical reasons, the actual blocking may take several days to implement.