The discovered facts suggest that offshore brokers GrandCapital and GCOption from St. Petersburg in Russia operated through various offshore entities in St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Seychelles, South Africa, Nigeria and Namibia. GrandCapital, which operates illegally without authorization, was accepted as a member of The Financial Commission in 2016. In our initial review, we discovered that the GrandCapital group was also behind the (no longer licensed) Estonian crypto payment processor SerenityPay a/k/a Serenity Financial. We discovered the latter to be a scam facilitator.
Key data
| Trading name | GrandCapital |
| Domain | https://grandcapital.net https://gcoptions.com https://grandcapital.ng |
| Social media | Facebook, Instagram, |
| Legal entities | GrandCapital Ltd, SVG Grand Capital Ltd, Seychelles Grand Capital Financial Services Pty Ltd, South Africa Grand C Option Consultencey, Nigeria Grand Capital Consulting Service, Namibia |
| Jurisdictions | St. Vincent & The Grenadines Seychelles Russia Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa |
| Authorization | No |
| Member of | The Financial Commission |
| Payment options | Credit and debit card alternative payments Crypto |
| Payment processors | Black Rabbit (https://brpay.io) Perfect Money, AstroPay, GT Bank (Nigeria), First National Bank, Bank Windhoek (Namibia), FasaPay, Help2Pay |
| Related individuals | Alexandr Kirillov (LinkedIn) Nikolai Lukovinov (LinkedIn) Shadi Mashkok (LinkedIn) Margarita Feigina (LinkedIn) Sergey Kozlovsky Olanrewaju Ogedengbe Henry (LinkedIn) |
| Related venture | Serenity Financial OÜ d/b/a SerenityPay |
| Warnings | AMF, CNMV, CMVM, FSMA |
The narrative
The GrandCapital group Facebook page gives St. Petersburg in Russia as their headquarters. We also discovered the Canadian-Russian payment processor Black Rabbit (what a name) as one of the facilitating card payment processors and we were greeted in Russian in this particular deposit process. There are more than 60 profiles associated with the GrandCapital LinkedIn page with the leading employees based in St. Petersburg.
The group operates two offshore brokers, GrandCapital.net and GCOption.com, as well as the trader education site GrandCapital.ng.
Until August 2020, Estonia-based Serenity Financial d/b/a SerenityPay (www.serenity-financial.io), which we discovered as a payment processor in the TradingroomStar broker scam, operated as a licensed crypto payment processor and Exchange operator. The license was lost. As a contact email, SerenityPay has provided a GrandCapital email address (screenshot right).
Unauthorized and non-compliant
The offshore brokers of the GrandCapital group happily recruit clients all over the world. Among them are also the regulatory regimes of the UK, EU, and Australia. The Spanish regulator CNMV already issued a warning against GrandCapital group in July 2019, the French AMF, the Italian Consob, the Portuguese CMVM as well as the Belgian FSMA have followed.
There are no blocking mechanisms for clients from regulatory regimes where GrandCapital has no authorization. The broker acquires clients illegally. Onboarding also does not meet the regulatory requirements of FCA, ESMA, ASIC, or other regulators. Clients can make deposits without proper KYC/AML even before verifying their identity.
Customers can theoretically make unlimited pre-KYC deposits via wire transfer to banks in Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, or Vietnam. In addition, we found the usual suspects like Perfect Money, AstroPay, or FasaPay as facilitators. Deposits are also possible via crypto.
Conclusion
GrandCapital is an illegally operating broker that systematically violates the regulatory requirements of most regimes. Therefore, you should stay far away or you will almost certainly lose your money. GrandCapital‘s membership in the private external dispute resolution organization The Financial Commission will not help. You are not entitled to any Investor Compensation Fund scheme or Financial Ombudsman assistance.
Share Information
If you have any information about the GrandCapital, group, its operators, and its facilitators, please share it with us through our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
