FCA | FinTelegram News

Category: FCA

December 15, 2022

Sure! Incoming UK FCA Chair Says That The Crypto Sector Deliberately Facilitates Money Laundering!

Ashley Alder, the incoming UK FCA chair, presents himself as a crypto skeptic. Well, that's not too hard, given the recent developments around FTX. At a cross-party Treasury select committee, Alder said that crypto companies facilitate money laundering. The FCA currently has oversight to check that crypto firms have effective anti-money laundering, but generally, crypto assets themselves are not regulated. The UK Treasury plans to regulate the crypto and give the FCA more power to do so.

December 12, 2022

FCA Fined Santander £107 Million For Money Laundering Failures

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Santander £107,793,300 after it found serious and persistent gaps in its anti-money laundering (AML) controls, affecting its Business Banking customers. However, the millions owed for the lapse come at a discounted rate. Had Santander not agreed to resolve the matter, it would not have qualified for the 30% discount rate and be on the hook for nearly £154 million. According to the FCA, a volume of more than £298 million of red-flag transactions has been processed.

December 11, 2022

Exposed: FCA-Regulated Connectum And Russian High-Risk Payment Processor Hawex!

FCA-regulated payment institution Connectum was a notorious scam facilitator and money launderer for the fraudulent Israeli broker scene. It processed payments for the cybercrime organization of the convicted Israeli Gal Barak. At least until a few months ago, Connectum has been working closely with the Russian-controlled high-risk payment processor Hawex, in which the notorious Indo-British Ruchi Rathor is also involved. Whistleblowers have provided us with data exposing Hawex merchants billed through Connectum.

December 1, 2022

UK FCA Fines Julius Baer And Bans Executives For Corrupt Business With Russian Yukos!

The UK FCA has fined Julius Baer International Limited (JBI) £18,022,500 for failing to conduct its business with integrity and taking reasonable care to organize and control its affairs. The FCA has also decided to ban Gustavo Raitzin, former Regional Head for Bank Julius Baer (BJB), Thomas Seiler, former BJB Sub-Regional Head for Russia and Eastern Europe and JBI non-executive director, and Louise Whitestone, former relationship manager on JBI’s Russian and Eastern European Desk.

November 27, 2022

Quo Vadis, MoneyNetInt? The Latest Update On A Legendary Binary Options Payment Processor!

The FCA-regulated e-money institution MoneyNetInt had its best time during the binary options hype. Most of the binary options scheme providers were Israelis, and, as it turns out, almost all of them were scam schemes. Many of them were clients of MoneyNetInt, such as IC Option, TitanTrade, or the schemes of Uwe Lenhoff and Gal Barak. As of 2017, binary options were banned in most regulatory regimes. Since then, MoneyNetInt's business might not be doing so well either, as their latest figures suggest. Here is an update.

November 24, 2022

Regulatory Warning Against Offshore Broker Scheme LQDFX!

Offshore broker LQDFX has been on our radar for about two years now. This is also because of its interesting background. The founder is the well-known fintech entrepreneur Ozan Ozerk, who founded several regulated companies in the UK, Lithuania, and other EEA jurisdictions. OpenPayd or EuroTrader are projects of Ozan Ozerk. The UK FCA has recently issued a warning against the offshore broker LQDFX, violating the EEA regimes' regulatory requirements.

November 24, 2022

Attention! Another Regulatory Warning Against SpotInvest Broker Scam!

A while ago, Spanish regulator CNMV warned against the broker scam BBanc, allegedly operated by St. Vincent & The Grenadines registered Primis LLC (report here). On 8 Sept 2022, the UK FCA warned against this offshore broker, as did the French AMF and the Canadian FCNB. Primis LLC was also the operator of the vanished FX Changer scam. The UK FCA warned against SpotInvest, another scam operated by Primis LLC. SpotInvest acts as a clone of FCA-regulated Spot Finance Limited.

November 13, 2022

UK Regulator FCA Petitioned Eight Companies Into Liquidation!

According to the FCA, these eight 8 firms appear to have connections to each other. None of the firms has ever been permitted to provide regulated investment services, but consumers may have invested substantial sums with at least 2 of the firms. The firms failed to respond to the regulator, who believed that they posed a significant risk to consumers. FCA took action to prevent these firms from causing further harm to consumers and to freeze any assets for the benefit of anyone owed money by the firms.

October 17, 2022

FCA Fines Gatehouse Bank With £1.5 Million For Money Laundering Issues

Money laundering is gradually becoming a serious crime in Europe as well. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Gatehouse Bank £1.5 million for its relaxed money-laundering checks. Gatehouse (website) failed to conduct sufficient checks on its customers based in countries with a higher risk of money laundering and terrorist financing. Gatehouse also failed to undertake the appropriate checks when some of the customers were classed as Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs).

September 18, 2022

Investor Warning Against SR Trade Forex

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has warned against the broker scam SR Trade Forex. SR Trade Forex claims to be a pure STP (straight-through processing) broker and Exchange, so, therefore, do not and cannot trade with you. On some pages of SR Trade Forex's website, we also found references to FXPro Market scam. In this respect, we assume that the two are operated by the same perpetrators. We found banks from India and Pakistan as payment processors.

September 15, 2022

Finally! FCA-Regulated ePayment Goes Out Of Business!

On 11 Feb 2020, FCA-licensed e-money institution ePayments System was ordered by the FCA to suspend all activity for “an indefinite period.” The regulator found “a number of weaknesses” in its anti-money laundering procedures. ePayments was one of the big e-money institutions in the UK, with over a million private accounts and more than 1,000 business accounts. One of the company's responsible directors at that time was Robert Courtneidge. Recently, ePayments announced that it would close the business.

August 20, 2022

Unusual Move: UK Regulator Apologizes For Supervision Failures In Premier FX Case!

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) admitted to some supervision failures that led to customers losing money in the collapse of the authorized payment processor Premier FX in 2018. The Regulator had been investigating complaints concerning its actions in the run-up to the Premier FX collapse. Of the 31 allegations against the regulator, the FCA has upheld five, including its decision to reauthorize Premier FX in May 2018, three months before the company was forced into administration.