CySEC is the financial supervisory authority of the Republic of Cyprus and a sort of gatekeeper for the EU financial markets. Cyprus has developed into the single most important gateway to EU financial markets for non-EU citizens and organizations. The Israeli financial scene in particular makes intensive use of this gateway. But also Russian individuals and companies enter the EU financial markets via Cyprus. The CySEC is controversial within the EU regulators because of its “relaxed” approach. Recently, other regulators like CONSOB and FCA have blocked CySEC-regulated companies to protect their own citizens from CySEC-regulated perpetrators.
Lucrative scam tourism
The situation of CySEC-regulated Cyprus Investment Firms (CIF) has been on the research agenda of FinTelegram News’ research team since its launch in early 2018. The hot and sunny island, which lies just under 300 km off Israel and one hour’s flight away from Tel-Aviv, has become the off-shore headquarters of many Israeli scammers during the era of binary options and forex trading.
As a matter of fact, the financial ecosphere around the CySEC has made a lot of money with the fraudulent Israeli binary options industry over the last years. Scam tourism has been a major source of income for Cypriot lawyers, consultants, and the CySEC itself. For conflicts between clients of CySEC CIFs, a financial ombudsman was established.
Cyprus is also the home of FinTechs that are not regulated by CySEC although they should be regulated. Praxis Cashier System Ltd of the Israeli Amit Klatchko, registered in Cyprus with the company no HE358607, is worth mentioning here. This company is literally involved in hundreds of scams as a facilitator. In any other EU country, the activities of this company would require authorization. The CySEC does not seem to see it that way, and thus practice Cashier can unscrupulously assist scams to defraud EU citizens.
Share information
If you are a victim of one of the scams, and/or if you have made payments to scams via CySEC-regulated companies and/or have experience in dealing with the Financial Ombudsman and/or have experience with CySEC, please report this to FinTelegram. You can also make the information anonymously through our whistleblower system.
