Yesterday the Moscow offices of TeleTrade were raided by Russian special police forces OMON. Aside from the Bank of Russia regulated brokerage, the offices of another brokerage firm, STForex, were also visited. There is no known connection between the events at this stage with the website of TeleTrade being offline since about 12:00 Moscow time.
Commenting to Finance Magnates, Vice President of TeleTrade, Dmitry Dragaylo, said: “Yesterday the offices of TeleTrade in Moscow have been visited after a signal from people who are not unknown to us. The police associates have checked our trading servers, and after putting together a report have left the premises.
Simultaneously we have been having some technical issues with parts of our services, our corporate CRM system and the website teletrade.ru. Currently the issues that clients were facing have been addressed with the CRM system and the client support systems up and running. The website will be restored to normal operation shortly."
In a response to an enquiry made by Finance Magnates to the customer support of STForex, a representative commented: “I was informed that its all business as usual and that no employees of the company have been apprehended.” A source with knowledge of the matter shared that some of the equipment of the firm has been confiscated by authorities in an ordinary manner.
TeleTrade was one of the very few companies that have obtained a license for operating on the Russian market as a retail Forex dealer. The company’s license from the Bank of Russia is one of the three currently issued by the central bank.
Last week the Russian mega-regulator denied the license applications for a duo of big companies, Alpari and Forex Club. According to an Interfax survey, TeleTrade is one of the top three forex brokers in Russia and has a wide net of offices across the country. The brokerage is also one of the co-founding companies of CRFIN.
In May this year the brokerage obtained a forex dealer license from the National Bank of Belarus.
