We received a letter from the Cyprus-based law firm KPK Legal confronting us with defamation claims on behalf of the IC Markets group. KPK Legal explicitly represents the interests of CySEC-regulated IC Markets (EU) Ltd and its offshore entity Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles. The letter to FinTelegram claims that, contrary to FinTelegram’s representation, IC Markets would not be included in the Italian Consob‘s Warning List. Well, this is fact and not defamation. We are publicly countering KPK Legal‘s letter as they also address Google in their false defamation allegations.
The Allegation
On behalf of their client, KPK Legal comments on the FinTelegram report published in November 2020: “We refuse and reject in its entirety the content of the above article which is false and misleading. We note that neither company belonging in the IC Market Group is now included in the warning list of CONSOB, something which is also evident from the invalid link that you provide in the above defamatory article.“
The Facts
CySEC-regulated IC Markets (EU) Ltd operates the broker scheme IC Markets with the domains www.icmarkets.eu and www.icmarkets.com/eu. Raw Trading Ltd, registered in Seychelles, on the other hand, operates the offshore mutation with the domain www.icmarkets.com/global.
We have found in our reviews that the offshore mutation IC Markets Global also solicits clients in the EU and UK, using methods that violate regulatory requirements in the UK and EU. Apparently, the Italian regulator Consob also sees it that way because, in November 2020, the regulator ordered the website blackout for the Italian market (screenshot left). We re-checked the link to the warning on 28 June 2022 and it worked.
Read more about the IC Markets Group
A license from FSA Seychelles does not entitle IC Markets Global to offer its regulated financial products in other regulatory regimes. Therefore, this offshore activity qualifies as illegal.
In this respect, the FinTelegram respective IC Markets report corresponds to the facts and is certainly not defamation. On the contrary, the false allegation of IC Markets and their legal representative constitutes defamation itself. Please stay tuned, we will bring more reports about IC Markets Group and their false defamation allegations over the next few days.
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If you have any information about IC Markets and its operators, please share it with us through our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
