Warsaw provincial administrative court has ruled that the Polish financial regulator FSA was correct in its decision to fine FX broker XTB with PLN 9.9 million.
September 10, 2019, | AtoZ Markets - About a year ago, Polish Forex broker XTB was slapped with a fine of PLN 9.9 million ($2.5 million) by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (FSA) due to “irregularities in the execution of client orders.”
The regulatory body claimed that the FX and CFD broker used a practice known as “asymmetric price slippage” in a time period stretching from January 2014 to May 2015. This practice allows passing on execution losses in full to clients.
See you in court
As we reported back in September, XTB stated a few hours after the announcement of the heavy monetary penalty that it fully disagrees with the FSA’s allegations of abusive price slippage, and that it will appeal against the $2.5 million fine. Fast forward to 2019.
XTB appealed the watchdog's finding but on Monday, a court in Warsaw upheld the fine imposed by the FSA.
“The [court] completely shared the opinion of the Polish [FSA] that XTB violated the legal order to take into account the best interests of clients,” wrote an employee of Warsaw’s provincial administrative court.
Police investigate XTB alleged fraud
An investigator from a court in Swidnica, a small city in the south-west of Poland, told reporters at local newspaper Puls Biznesu that police are carrying out an investigation into the alleged fraud that took place at the company.
According to Puls Biznesu, 283 people have been questioned by police in connection with the case. It further added that the police believe that the broker took somewhere between PLN 8 million to PLN 23.5 million from its clients.
XTB is a leading forex broker in Central and Eastern Europe, providing online trading in over 1500 instruments, including forex, indices, shares, commodities, cryptocurrencies. AtoZMarkets has reached out to the firm for comment regarding the court's decision. We will continue to follow this story as it develops.
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