Italy’s financial regulatory authority, Consob has added 6 new illegal websites to its blacklist. On 12 November, the authority ordered to close the websites of Miva Solutions, Widdershins Group, EuropeMarkets NET, STRAT and TechWare.
In the last 28 months, Consob has blocked a total of 548 websites. Additionally, the authority highlighted its recent initiatives to protect Italian residents from illegal financial companies. Since July 2019, Consob has increased its crackdown against unlawful companies operating in the region.
“The black-out of these websites by Internet service providers operating on Italian territory is ongoing. For technical reasons, it can take several days for the black-out to come into effect. Consob draws investors' attention to the importance of adopting the greatest diligence in order to make informed investment choices, adopting common-sense behavior, essential to safeguard their savings: these include, websites that offer financial services, checking in advance that the operator with whom they are investing is authorized, and offers of financial products, that a prospectus has been published,” Consob mentioned.
In the past few months, Consob has collaborated with other financial regulators to protect investors. The Italian regulator joined hands with the Institute for the Supervision of Insurance (Ivass) recently for the protection of investors in the region.
Consob’s Efforts
On its official website, Consob has a dedicated page for investors to identify fraudulent financial companies. Furthermore, the financial regulator highlighted the importance of identifying a scam website.
“Most of the time, the operations made by UNAUTHORIZED subjects, lacked the necessary requirements, including property and organizational ones, as envisaged by the regulations for the protection of investors, effectively give rise to SCAMS. If you are contacted by or if you come across a domain/website which offers you the opportunity to trade online (i.e. trade on binary options and/or Forex transactions), please verify first of all if it is authorized,” Consob outlined on its website.
