Italy’s Consob Blacklists Six Financial Websites

Consob (Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa), the Italian government’s top authority responsible for regulating the domestic securities market, has blocked six websites involved in the financial services offering. According to the press release, these sites allegedly illegally offer financial products.

As of press time, the websites included on Consob’s blacklist were Infinity4X, Empire Trading, EqualityFin, Fincloud, AXA Business Solution Ltd and Techsync Management Consultancies LLC.

With the new set of blockages, Consob raised its number of blocked websites to 663 since it launched the campaign in July 2019. The watchdog has enacted the order under the ‘Growth Decree’, which provides them with the legal authority to blacklist the websites that are suspected of participating in illegal financial activities.

“Consob draws investors’ attention to the importance of adopting the greatest diligence in order to make informed investment choices, adopting common sense behaviors, 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,” the Italian watchdog warned.

Five Websites Blocked

Early this month, in a statement published on its website, Consob used powers deriving from the ‘Growth Decree’ (Law no. 58 of 28 June 2019, Article no. 36, paragraph 2-terdecies) to order Internet connectivity service providers to prevent access from Italy to five websites.

It included Trust Pixs Limited, Scintilla Enterprise Ltd, pages from Miva Solutions LLC and Ingenue Consulting LLC.

In February, Consob announced that it had updated its communication regarding the distribution of complex financial products to retail customers. The market regulator said that it had made such updates to increase the level of protection of retail customers, who are considered to be vulnerable in the complex financial products market.