The French Financial Market Authority (AMF) and the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) have flagged 15 new unauthorized websites offering forex investment services in the country. Additionally, the financial market supervisors uncovered one illegal platform offering derivative products with various underlying assets including cryptocurrencies.
Both authorities disclosed these on Wednesday and warned French retail investors “against the activities of several entities offering in France investments in forex and crypto-assets derivatives without being authorized to do so.”
AMF, ACPR Unveil 15 Illegal Forex Websites
According to AMF and ACPR, the unauthorized forex websites include www.1market.com/fr, www.24cryptoforextrading.net, bitictrade.com, boursecapital.net, and www.cryptoneyx.io. Also unauthorized are fr.finaguide.com, lions-broker.com, www.multibankfx.com, fr.puprime.net and raisefx.com.
The other illegal forex platforms blacklisted by the authorities are traderhouse.com, valutamarkets.com, www.vestapros.com, www.t4trade.com and virtuscapital.world. On the other hand, www.silveriz.fr is the unauthorized crypto-asset derivatives provider flagged by the French markets watchdog in the new update.
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Blacklisted Forex Sites Drop in 2022 per AMF, ACPR
According to AMF and ACPR, the total number of unauthorized forex sites blacklisted this year dropped by 30% to 49 platforms, which is down from 61 last year. This comes even as the number of French retail investors declined by 35% during the third quarter of the year.
Furthermore, the authorities have only flagged two platforms offering crypto-asset derivatives this year, and this represents a 92% drop from the 24 unauthorized websites flagged in 2021.
Speaking on the new updates, the French financial markets regulator urged investors to confirm if their financial products and services providers are permitted to operate in the country. To do this, they urged them to check its register of authorized investment service providers and those of permitted intermediaries in the financial investment advisor or crowdfunding categories.
“If the intermediary in question does not appear on any of the last two lists, we strongly recommend that you should not make use of their services, as they are in breach of the applicable legislation and are not required to comply with basic rules of investor protection, information disclosure, and claims handling,” it explained.
