16 July, AtoZForex.com, Lagos – In line with its regular tradition of constantly searching for non-compliant firms, the French financial regulator, Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) has updated its “Black List” of unauthorised or fraudulent firms. The regulator's primary aim is to protect and warn the unsuspecting public from doing business with such firms. The new entries on the AMF FX Blacklist are listed below:
- Capital Market Limited, with the website: fxcapitalbank.com
- Fxcmanagement, active on: fxcmanagement.com
- Globus Capital Associates Limited, operative through: globuscapitallimited.com
- IAP Ltd., operative on website: ia-patrimoine.com
The watchdog reiterated that to ensure the genuineness of any intermediary that offers financial products, or if its services are allowed to operate in France, individuals can consult the list of authorized investment service providers. Accessible through the website: https://www.regafi.fr, or through the list of authorized intermediaries in the financial investment adviser category (CIF). Another method is through the Advisor equity investments (CIP), at: https://www.orias.fr/search.
In a case, a firm is not on the list of valid firms, AMF strongly discourages individuals from responding to its requests. Considering that such entities are breaching the applicable legislation and basically are not obliged to respect the basic rules of protection of investors, proper information or treatment claims.
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Some months back, the AMF carried out an investigation on 29 Forex related websites, specifically of those frequented by French Investors, called a "mystery inquisition". In reality AMF mystery inquisition involved a group of investigators who opened a live account, whilst left out on purpose the card details and verification produces. After that the mystery investigators commenced their trading activities and eventually they applied for the withdrawal of funds, upon which the firm discovered the following lapses amongst others in the operations of such firms:
- The mystery shoppers, weeks after the shopping campaign, were only able to recover their funds from just 2 out of the 9 companies that were investigated.
- 9 out of the 29 websites still allowed clients to open live trading accounts, despite the refusal to supply credit card details.
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- 3 out of the 9 websites did not prevent clients from trading for up to 10 days before confirming the identity of the clients. 5 websites did not request any form of identity from the traders.
- Also, there were many obstacles encountered in the withdrawal process, as some company’s staff outrightly discouraged clients from withdrawing their funds.