Italy’s Companies and Exchange Commission (CONSOB) has ordered the blocking of the websites of seven unauthorized firms.

The websites offer financial services without the necessary authorization. Consob ordered the blackout of four abusive financial intermediation websites and three websites through which crypto currency services are abusively provided.

The entities targeted by the latest orders are:

• “Finanza Expert” (website https://finanzaexpert.com and related pages https://clients.finanzaexpert.com and https://trading.finanzaexpert.com);
• “Cmswiss” (website https://cmswiss.com and related page https://webtrader.cmswiss.com);
• “Aspect-Markets” (website https://aspect-markets.cc and related pages https://aspect-markets.online and https://web.aspect-markets.trade);
• “UCapital Trading” (website https://ucapitaltrading.com and related page https://clients.ucapitaltrading.com);
• “Caa871” (website https://caa871.it);
• “Sdf837” (website https://sdf837.it);
• “SYBZ” (website https://sybzgroup.co).

In issuing the orders, the Commission made use of the powers deriving from the “Decreto crescita” (“Growth Decree”, converted by Law No. 58 of 28 June 2019) regarding the black-out of websites of abusive financial intermediaries, as well as of the powers introduced by the MiCAR (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 and Legislative Decree No. 129 of 5 September 2024) regarding the blocking of websites through which cryptocurrency services are provided in Italy in the absence of the prescribed authorizations.

The number of websites blacked out since July 2019, when Consob got the power to order that the websites of fraudulent financial intermediaries be blacked out, has thus risen to 1,275.

The implementation of the black-out of these websites by Internet service providers is ongoing. For technical reasons, it can take several days for the blocking to be implemented.