Italy’s Consob Blocks Five New Financial Websites

On Thursday, Consob (Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa), the Italian government’s top authority responsible for regulating the domestic securities market, announced that it blacked out five new websites.

According to the press release, Consob blocked access to the websites of FX Publications INC, Xtbinvesting, Preqster Ltd, Bitaliana and Bloomb Trading Facility BV. Since July 2019, there have been 674 blacklisted websites when Consob was given the power to order fraudulent financial intermediaries’ websites to be blacklisted.

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 authority warned.

Recent Blackouts

Recently, Consob ordered the blackout of the websites belonging to Infinity4X, Empire Trading, EqualityFin, Fincloud, AXA Business Solution Ltd and Techsync Management Consultancies LLC.

Early in March, 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) 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 addition, Consob announced in February that it had updated its communication regarding the distribution of complex financial products to retail customers. This step was taken to increase the level of protection of retail customers, who are considered to be vulnerable in the complex financial products market.