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Alert! Russian-Controller GrandCapital And GC Option Still Attack European Consumers!

GrandCapital and SerenityPay on Fintelegram
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FinTelegram published its initial review of the GrandCapital broker scheme in April 2022. We uncovered that offshore brokers GrandCapital and GC Option are controlled by Russian individuals and operated through various offshore entities in St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Seychelles, South Africa, Nigeria, and Namibia. Currently, GrandCapital is celebrating its 16th anniversary and aggressively promoting its offering in Europe and North America without proper authorization. Stay away!

Key data

Trading namesGrandCapital
GC Option
Business activitiesForex, CFD, crypto broker
Domainhttps://grandcapital.net
https://grandcapital.ng

https://gcoption.com
Social mediaFacebook, Instagram,
LinkedIn
Legal entitiesGrandCapital Ltd, SVG
GC Option Ltd, SVG (not found)
Grand Capital Ltd, Seychelles
Grand Capital Financial Services Pty Ltd, South Africa
Grand C Option Consultencey, Nigeria
Grand Capital Consulting Service, Namibia
JurisdictionsSt. Vincent & The Grenadines
Seychelles
Russia
Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa
Contact data+1 646 844 7187
Leverageup to 1:500
AuthorizationNo
Member ofThe Financial Commission
Payment optionsCredit and debit card
alternative payments
Crypto
Payment processorsBlack Rabbit (https://brpay.io)
Perfect Money, AstroPay,
GT Bank (Nigeria), First National Bank,
Bank Windhoek (Namibia), FasaPay,
Help2Pay
Related individualsAlexandr Kirillov (LinkedIn)
Nikolai Lukovinov (LinkedIn)
Shadi Mashkok (LinkedIn)
Margarita Feigina (LinkedIn)
Sergey Kozlovsky
Olanrewaju Ogedengbe Henry (LinkedIn)
Related ventureSerenity Financial OÜ d/b/a SerenityPay
WarningsAMF, CNMV, CMVM, FSMA

The Short Narrative

Our initial review exposed that the GrandCapital group was also behind the (no longer licensed) Estonian crypto payment processor SerenityPay a/k/a Serenity Financial. We discovered the latter to be a scam facilitator.

GrandCapital was accepted as a member of The Financial Commission in 2016.

Black Rabbit facilitates the unauthorized offshore broker GrandCapital

The GrandCapital group’s Facebook page states that its headquarters are in St. Petersburg, Russia. We also discovered the Canadian-Russian payment processor Black Rabbit (what a name) as one of the facilitating card payment processors. We were greeted in Russian in this particular deposit process. There are more than 60 profiles associated with the GrandCapital LinkedIn page with the leading employees based in St. Petersburg.

GrandCapital associated with Serenity Financial dba SerenityPay

The group operates two offshore brokers, GrandCapital.net and GCOption.com, and the trader education site GrandCapital.ng.

Until August 2020, Estonia-based Serenity Financial d/b/a SerenityPay (www.serenity-financial.io), which we discovered as a payment processor in the TradingroomStar broker scam, operated as a licensed crypto payment processor and Exchange operator. The license was lost. As a contact email, SerenityPay has provided a GrandCapital email address (screenshot right).

Unauthorized And Non-Compliant Activities

GrandCapital payment instructions for bank wires and Perfect Money

The offshore brokers of the GrandCapital group happily recruit clients worldwide. Among them are also the regulatory regimes of the UK, EU, and Australia. The Spanish regulator CNMV already issued a warning against the GrandCapital group in July 2019, the French AMF, the Italian Consob, the Portuguese CMVM, and the Belgian FSMA have followed.

There are no blocking mechanisms for clients from regulatory regimes where GrandCapital has no authorization. The broker acquires clients illegally. Onboarding also does not meet the regulatory requirements of FCA, ESMA, ASIC, or other regulators. Clients can make deposits without proper KYC/AML even before verifying their identity.

Customers can theoretically make unlimited pre-KYC deposits via wire transfer to Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, or Vietnam banks. In addition, we found the usual suspects like Perfect Money, AstroPay, or FasaPay as facilitators. Deposits are also possible via crypto.

GrandCapital also offers leverage of up to 1:500, although the regulatory regimes in the EEA region allow a maximum of 1:30.

Conclusion

GrandCapital is an illegally operating broker that systematically violates the regulatory requirements of most regimes. Therefore, you should stay far away, or you will almost certainly lose your money. GrandCapital‘s membership in the private external dispute resolution organization The Financial Commission will not help. You are not entitled to any Investor Compensation Fund scheme or Financial Ombudsman assistance.

Share Information

If you have any information about the GrandCapital, group, its operators, and its facilitators, please share it with us through our whistleblower system, Whistle42.

  1. Louise Elizabeth says:

    WDCMARKETS is a big scam, I invested a lot of money in this company and everything was going good until I said I wanted to withdraw and all my money was gone. I paid 240,000 Euros, they won’t allow me to withdraw any of my money out, I email them everyday, once you put money in, you can’t get it out.

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