Italy’s Companies and Exchange Commission (CONSOB) has ordered the blackout of 28 new pages/websites that abusively offer financial services. The intervention follows a report from the Finance Police.
Consob and the Finance Police have agreed to continue and intensify the collaboration related to this subject. To this purpose it was decided the institution of a dedicated joint working group.
As part of a wide-ranging investigation, several web domains were identified through which trading services on financial instruments, mostly related to cryptocurrencies, were illegally offered.
The Authority availed itself of the powers deriving from the “Growth Decree” (Law no. 58 of 28 June 2019, Article no. 36, paragraph 2-terdecies), relating to the blackout of websites of abusive financial intermediaries.
Below are the 28 pages/websites targeted by the latest set of blocking orders:
- Gate Technology Corp (www.gate.io, www.gateio.rocks, www.gateio.ws);
- “EliteCrypto Trade” (www.elitecryptotrade.com);
- Maxbit LLC (www.quotex.io, www.quotex.com);
- PrimeXBT Trading Services LLC (www.primexbt.com and related page https://my.primexbt.com);
- Po Trade Ltd (www.po.trade);
- AMarkets Ltd (www.amarkets.com and related page https://my.amarkets.org);
- “Finmax” (internet domain www.finmaxbo.com);
- SimpleFX Ltd (https://simplefx.com and related page https://app.simplefx.com);
- Vantage Global Limited (www.monetamarkets.com);
- “Ultimate-mining.co” (www.ultimate-mining.co);
- “Bitcoin ERA” and “Absystem” (https://bitcoinera.app and https://absystem.world);
- “Bitcoin ERA”, “CryptoRobot”, “Sagatrade” (www.bitcoinera.com, www.cryptorobot.com, www.sagatrade.io);
- “Bitcoin-evolutionpro”, Twingle Consulting LTD (www.bitcoin-evolutionpro.com and https://cointrade.cc);
- “Bitcoin UP” “FXPLANB” (www.bitcoin-up.live and https://fxplanb.com);
- Binarium Limited (www.binarium.com, https://binarium.global and https://binarium.trading).
The number of websites blacked out since July 2019, when Consob got the power to order that the websites of fraudulent financial intermediaries be blacked out, has thus risen to 593. Earlier in December, the regulator issued blocking orders against six illegal financial intermediation websites and one website through which an offer of financial products is carried out in the absence of a prospectus.
The black-out of these websites by Internet service providers is ongoing. For technical reasons, it can take several days for the blocking to be implemented.