Cyprus financial regulator CySEC has announced the issuing of a €40,000 fine to London Capital Group (Cyprus) Ltd, the CySEC-licensed arm of UK based CFDs and spread betting broker LCG (at website lcg.com).
The Board of the CySEC wishes to inform the public that, at its meeting held on the 5th April 2021, it decided to impose an administrative fine of €40,000 to CIF London Capital Group (Cyprus) Ltd for non-compliance with article 16(2) of Regulation (EU) 596/2014 on market abuse, as further specified in Articles 2 and 3(8) of the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/957 supplementing Regulation (EU) 596/2014, as it does not maintain effective arrangements and procedures to detect and report suspicious orders and transactions, which also ensure the monitoring those.
In particular, CySEC stated that the company does not retain the information that substantiates the analysis it carries out in relation to the examined transactions that it performed, for which alerts had appeared, which could constitute abuse of privileged information, market manipulation or attempted misuse of privileged information.
In determining the amount of the fine, the regulator said it took into account the following factors:
i. The seriousness that the legislator attaches to such violations, which is reflected in the amount of the administrative fine provided in the Market Abuse Law of 2016 for such violations.
ii. The central importance attached to the maintenance of records, regarding analyses carried out for suspicious orders and transactions, for the detection of acts of market abuse, for purposes of proving compliance with the requirements of Regulation 596/2014 and facilitating CySEC in the performance of its duties.
iii. As a mitigating factor, the fact that the company has not committed any similar breach in the past.