The Cypriot financial market supervisor, CySEC, continues its crackdown on non-compliance and announced on Tuesday enforcement action against two more regulated companies, Ayers Alliance Financial Group Limited and BrokerCreditService (Cyprus) Limited.
Ayers Alliance was found to be in violation of the regulator’s mandatory staffing requirements for its risk management department. Now, the regulator has ceased the company from using personnel without the skills, knowledge and expertise required for the performance of the responsibilities of the Head of the Risk Management Department.
But, BrokerCreditService is facing an administrative fine of €10,000 for non-compliance with Cyprus’ market abuse laws. The company did not establish and maintain effective arrangements and systems for detecting suspicious transactions. Thus, it was not taking account of the circumstances of change in the price of the financial instruments in which it is trading, and which may give rise to reasonable suspicions that a transaction on the financial instrument could constitute insider dealing.
Financial Service Providers
Both companies offer investment and trading services to their client base.
BrokerCreditService’s offerings under the CySEC license include electronic access through its trading system for the sale and purchase of equities and derivatives on MICEX (Russia), LSE and several other trading exchanges.
Additionally, the Russian sister company of BCS Cyprus became one of the very few locally regulated forex brokers in the country.
However, Ayers Alliance offers asset management and structure investment products services. The company was previously known as Harborx Ltd.
Meanwhile, CySEC has been very active in taking action against non-compliant entities recently. Within the past few days, the regulator withdrew the Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) license of three companies, but all of them voluntarily decided to renounce their licenses.
Furthermore, the Cypriot regulator is actively blacklisting fraudulent financial services companies that are targeting clients within its jurisdictions. Most of these companies are offshore entities illegally offering services or outright frauds making false claims.
