The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) announced on Thursday that it has withdrawn the Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) license of the troubled AFX Capital Markets Ltd, a decision that was taken by the board back in July.
An investigation of the regulator found multiple compliance violations, including some serious infringements of some provisions, by the former CIF. The decision to withdraw the license was taken as the company ‘no longer meets the conditions under which the authorization was granted’.
Fines
Additionally, the regulatory actions were extended to some key board members of the broker due to their non-compliance with the regulatory provisions.
Manuela Mazzacco, the Executive Director of the failed broker, has been slapped with a €100,000 administrative fine, along with a five-year ban from exercising management functions at any CIFs. Andreas Lianos, another Executive Director of the company, is facing an administrative fine of €50.000 with a ban of three years.
Three other Non-Executive Directors, Costas Georgiades, Elena Economides Demetriou and Andrea Papagapiou were spared from the regulatory actions because of their limited capacity in the company.
Furthermore, CySEC took action against the two auditors of AFX Capital Markets, imposing €100,000 in administrative fines each to BDO Ltd and Anthimos, Leonidou and Partners Ltd.
Based in Cyprus, AFX Capital Markets received its CySEC license in 2010 and was operating multiple investment platforms. However, the broker has remained in the regulator’s bad books and faced fines earlier.
The Cypriot regulator even briefly suspended the license of the broker in 2019 over concerns of compliance investigation related to client money rules. Furthermore, the UK unit of the broker entered into special administration the same year after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found serious lapses in its operations.
