You Were Warned! Ukrainian Broker MMCIS Limits Withdrawals as Part of Anti-Crisis Measures

Ukraine-based broker, MMCIS, shifted to crisis management mode today in response to the outbreak of the "information war" we reported last week and probably also the Maltese warning against MMCIS from yesterday. The newly elected president of the company, Roman Komysa, signed and issued an emergency anti-crisis program in order to "stabilize the company under a raider attack and eliminate panic due to external factors."

In order to eliminate client panic, the broker has decided to cancel all client requests for withdrawal of funds that are in process but have not yet passed the final inspection and have not reached the financial department of MMCIS. Moreover, until further notice, the broker has limited the maximum amount of withdrawal to $200. In addition, clients now cannot request more than one withdrawal application per week, and accordingly, will not be able to withdraw more than $800 per month.

Also from the list of anti-crisis measures, it seems that the company intends to increase staff in its financial department at the expense of all other departments that will be cut down in size. MMCIS management promises to speed up the process of customer verification, but apparently does not know how to, as it asks its staff for suggestions on how to achieve it. Additionally, the funds in the accounts of introducing brokers and partners are apparently locked temporarily as some payment systems are disabled. The president ordered the company "to take steps to unblock them and continue using the temporarily disabled payment systems."

The most defensive anti-crisis measures taken by the new leadership are to hire lawyers to file lawsuits against the media involved in the supposed PR attack, implement technical limitations on their website and order the firm's security department to organize a defense of the company's employees to prevent pressure on them by third parties, including psychological, logistical and more. The last measure might suggest that the broker is expecting clients and introducing brokers to actually come to the door and demand withdrawals.

MMCIS, based on the successful practices of other companies, the management states that it hopes its clients will understand the need for the restrictive measures, and promises to inform them directly about further developments. At the same time, the company is going "to block the possibility of opponents to distort the positive essence of the introduced restrictive measures," and employ more moderators to censor forum posts and comments.

Hopefully, MMCIS's anti-crisis plan will work and they will be able to regain customer trust, bringing them back again, whereafter they will have to work hard in order to get their money out.