The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) has added three more companies to its warning list, but most notably, its cautioned against two popular foreign Exchange (Forex ) brokerages: Hot Forex and OANDA Malaysia Corporation, which is a clone of the OANDA website and not associated with OANDA, which is headquartered in the United States,
The third one which was blamed for misrepresentation using the SC’s logo is a phishing website Torque Market Limited or Torque Trader, which was using Torque.asia’s name and not associated with Torque.asia.
The caution list was updated only a week after the financial regulator added 13 more companies, including the international and local brands of Alpari.
Is Local License Mandatory?
According to the SC, these brokerages are not licensed in Malaysia and thus not authorized to offer their services in the country. These companies are allegedly violating the country’s Capital Markets and Services Act 2007 and, if convicted, the promoters could be imprisoned and heavily fined.
The warnings list detailed that Hot Forex and the others listed are ‘carrying out of the unlicensed capital market activities of dealing securities’, while the former is also ‘operating a recognized market without authorization from the SC’.
Hot Forex is authorized under the regulators of the United Kingdom, the UAE, Cyprus, and a few others.
Earlier, the Malaysian regulator flagged Binance, eToro, OctaFX, and FintechFX, saying none of them are licensed to operate in the country.
Editor's note:
This article was amended to correct an earlier version that erroneously listed OANDA as being warned by the SC, when in fact it was an unauthorised clone that was warned. We would like to thank OANDA for the clarification. Also, an earlier version of this article had not clarified that Torque Market Limited or Torque Trader was in fact a phishing website using Torque.asia’s name.
