The Israeli-regulated division of retail broker AvaTrade - ATrade - was issued with a NIS 576,000 ($153,464) fine by the Israeli Securities Authority (ISA) on Tuesday.
A statement issued by the ISA said that the fine was a result of two infringements made by the firm.
Unfortunately, the language used by the regulator in its press release was vague and gleaning exactly what the company did wrong from that statement isn’t easy.
“[ATrade],” the regulator said, “failed to make adjustments and controls in accordance with the law and failed to receive a special report from the auditor.”
The regulator did leave something of a cryptic hint as to what the fine pertained to in an additional comment tacked on to the end of its statement.
“In imposing this financial sanction on the [ATrade], the authority emphasizes the importance of Regulation in the [foreign Exchange market],” the regulator said, “including compliance with all the obligations related to the proper maintenance of the customers' money.”
Second Fine for AvaTrade
This is not the first time that ATrade has been fined by the ISA.
Back in May of 2017, the Israeli regulator fined the broker NIS 150,000 ($40,500) for what it said was a misleading marketing campaign.
At the time, Israeli FX regulation was fairly new, and most businesses operating from the country were running unlicensed brokers.
Along with the hordes of loutish binary options brokers, this allowed a swathe of less than savory characters to operate broker with a very dubious business model.
After regulation was put in place, ATrade became one of the first companies to receive a license from the ISA. In order to promote themselves, they ran an advert which, the ISA said, implied a regulatory license would prevent traders from losing cash.
Finance Magnates reached out to ATrade before the publication of this story, but the company did not wish to comment on the details of Tuesday's fine.
