The International Financial Services Commission of Belize (IFSC) today issued a warning against another binary options broker purporting to be registered in the country. The Belize watchdog warned that a company calling itself ‘TitanTrade’ is not licensed by IFSC or any other competent authority in the country to conduct any trading business.
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According to the Belize’s watchdog, all persons concerned should exercise extreme caution and take note, as the aforementioned entity is fraudulently claiming to hold a trading licence in financial and commodity-based derivative instruments and other securities licence issued by the Samoa International Financial Authority.
TitanTrade, which operates through the SpotOption platform, offers related trading services, but doesn’t hold the appropriate licenses or authorization to do so. A brief review of the broker’s website reveals that Titantrade lists its head office address in Belize, and in the ‘Contact Us’ section it makes reference to other global contacts including the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, South Africa and Spain.
Regulatory precedents
This is not the first time that TitanTrade has sparked regulatory concerns. Earlier in April, Italian financial watchdog CONSOB red-flagged the binary options broker. Moreover, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) issued a warning that TitanTrade is not authorised in March 2015, and the same action was taken by France’s financial market regulator (AMF) in September 2015 when it included TitanTrade in its periodically updated list of unregulated binary options providers. In the same month, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC ) included TitanTrade in its RED List.
With complaints from clients still pouring in, ASIC decided back in July to take legal action against TitanTrade in the Federal Court to restrain its operators from carrying on a financial services business whilst unlicensed. The court made orders prohibiting the operators of the website and other associated persons and entities from issuing financial products, including binary options trading, advertising or promoting its products, and operating the website in Australia.
