Since early August, the Italian regulator issued only a few warnings and black-out orders. Apparently, this was also vacation time for the Consob staff. Before that, Consob regularly issued its black-out orders on Monday of the week. Today, the regulator came back from the holiday season and ordered the black-out of 10 websites offering illegal financial services. This means that Consob has already blocked 500 websites since July 2019. Currently, Consob is unfortunately the only EU regulator that can block websites.
The Italian “Decreto Crescita” (“Growth Decree”; Law no. 58 of 28 June 2019, article 36, paragraph 2-terdecies) authorizes Consob to order internet service providers to block access from Italy to websites offering financial services without the proper authorization. Below are the sites Consob has ordered to be blacked out this week:
- Gs4trade Invest Limited and website https://gs4trade.com;
- Capitrades and website https://capitrades.com;
- Fundiza Ltd and website www.fundiza.com;
- Plus Cfd Ltd and website https://pluscfd.co;
- Medica Trade and website https://medicatrade.cc;
- Nata Trade Limited and websites www.nata-trade.com and https://webtrader.preminvtradplatform.com;
- Eu Investments Limited and James Long (Masons) Limited and websites https://eu-investings.com;
- DevTech Holding and website www.capital-swiss.com.
With the last ten interventions, the number of sites blacked out, in fact, reaches 505.
The black-out of these websites by internet service providers operating on Italian territory is ongoing. For technical reasons, it can take several days for the black-out to come into effect, Consob informs.
