Italian Regulator Consob Blocks More Illegal Trading Platforms

On Thursday, Italian financial markets regulator Consob (the Italian Companies and Exchange Commission) ruled that four new online broker sites should be blocked for illegitimately providing financial services within its borders. To date, Consob has blocked a total of 796 illegal trading platforms.

The newly added four platforms to Consobs blocked list are Tetris Group Ltd, Broker Capitals Limited, MTinvesting, and NBIMarkets. All four of these companies specialize in providing financial services in the Italian language, explicitly targeting Italian clients.

These platforms provide high-risk investment products, typically in the form of contracts for differences (CFDs) for stocks, foreign exchange, and other common asset classes. They also included cryptocurrency instruments, which are well-liked by retail traders due to their high level of market volatility.

According to data from the trade organization for the sector, UK Finance, Britons lost more than £1.3 billion to online fraud and scams in 2013. In the first five months of the current year, investment scams cost Australians another AU$158 million. Regulators are taking several measures to stop these frauds, but it is never enough.

In all markets, fraud is prevalent. However, problems arise when traders attempt to withdraw money from these platforms, which makes the platforms and their wrongdoings known to the public.

Regulators are taking a number of measures to stop these frauds, but it is never enough. Fraudsters are constantly coming up with new strategies to catch their prey. For example, major technology firms are also now joining the fight against fraud. After granting service licences to many dubious businesses, Apple removed two MetaTrader apps from the App Store a month ago.

Consob asserted that it is the only financial market watchdog that can order the block of red-flagged websites at an internet service provider level without proper authorization.

Consob emphasizes the need for investors to exercise the utmost caution to choose investments wisely and adopt common sense behaviours crucial to protecting their savings. These behaviours include verifying in advance on websites that offer financial services whether the operator with whom you are investing is authorized and confirming that a prospectus has been published on offers of financial products.