The Spanish regulator CNMV has recently issued an investor warning against the broker Alpari, operating illegally in Europe via the offshore entity Alpari Limited, registered in St. Vincent & The Grenadines. We uncovered Praxis Cashier as a facilitating payment processor. From the information available to FinTelegram, it seems that die Alpari Group is related to the Forex Time Group and the ForTrade Group. Both are brokers regulated by the UK FCA and the Cyprus CySEC.
Read our report on Alpari, ForTrade, GloryFT, and ForexFX here!
Key data
| Brands | Alpari, Forex Time, FXTM, ForTrade, GloryFT, TorexFX |
| Domains | www.alpari.com, www.alpari.org, www.alpari-broker.ru, www.alpari.im, www.fxtm.com, www.fortrade.com, www.forextime.com, www.gloryft.com, www.torexfx.com |
| Legal entities | Alpari Limited (SVG), FT Invest Ltd (Seychelles), Alpari Limited (Russia), FT Global Services Ltd, Exinity Ltd (Mauritius), Exinity UK Ltd (UK), Fortrade Cyprus Ltd (Cyprus), Fortrade Limited (UK), Fort Securities Israel Limited (Israel), Fort Securities Australia Pty. Ltd (Australia), ForTrade Canada Limited (Canada), LLC “Fort Securities BLR” (Belarus), Alpari Evrasia LLC (Belarus), and counting |
| Jurisdictions | UK, Cyprus, Belarus, Russia, Israel, Seychelles, Mauritius, Canada, |
| Regulatory regimes | FCA, CySEC, FSA Seychelles, FSC Mauritius, Bank of Russia, National Bank of Belarus, |
| Warnings | CNMV, FCA, |
The narrative
The Alpari Group has been attacking consumers in Europe without authorization for several years with changing legal entities. The website claims that more than 2 million people would already trade with Alpari.
Besides Alpari Limited in St. Vincent & The Grenadines, the offshore entity FT Invest Ltd in Seychelles is also part of the Alpari Group. This entity has a Security Dealer License from the Financial Services Authority Seychelles (FSAS). The contact person for FT Invest Ltd on the FSAS website is Armenian Arman Grigoryan with an Armenian phone number and email with the domain FXTM.com (see picture left).
The FXTM broker with the domain www.fxtm.com belongs to the Forex Time Group, regulated in Cyprus through Forextime Ltd with the license number 185/12 by CySEC and Exinity UK Ltd by UK FCA with the reference number 777911. In this respect, we can conclude that Alpari Group is a related company to Forex Time Group.
Preliminary conclusion – illegal and non-compliant
There is no doubt that Alpari, ForTrade, and Forex Time share their resources. Two examples:
- Forex Time and Alpari use Exinity Limited in Mauritius, regulated by the FSC, for their respective offshore activities.
- One of our previous reports uncovered that Alpari and ForTrade jointly operate the Russian GloryFT broker.
There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that Alpari is a joint offshore broker for ForTrade and Forex Time and/or that the offshore activities of all three brokers are conducted in a coordinated manner.
Alpari is operating in Europe without authorization and therefore illegal, as the CNMV established. Furthermore, Alpari violates the regulatory provisions of ESMA and the regulatory regimes in the EU and those in the UK. When onboarding, one can deposit any amount using credit and debit cards via Praxis Cashier or other payment options without proper KYC/AML.
Furthermore, Alpari offers leverage of 1:3000, although, in the EU, a maximum of 1:30 is allowed for retail CFDs.
It is up to the responsible regulatory authorities to determine whether this procedure or structure is permitted or serves to circumvent regulatory provisions.
Share information
We would like to know more about the connection between Alpari, Forex Time, and ForTrade. It looks like these three major broker groups are under unified management.
