The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) has reached a €150,000 settlement with the forex and CFDs broker, Credit Financier Invest (CFI) Limited for possible violation of compliance around preventing money laundering and terror financing.
Though publicly announced on Tuesday, the Cypriot regulator took the decision in early May. The company has already settled with the regulator, paying the amount with an understanding that “some of CFI processes are now enhanced.”
CFI is a multi-regulated brokerage platform. Apart from Cyprus, it is licensed in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon and Mauritius. The settlement with the Cypriot financial market watchdog was only made for the Cypriot entity of the CFI Group.
The regulatory announcement detailed that the broker had possibly violated three specific violations of compliance. These are laws around the application of adequate and appropriate procedures concerning customer identification and customer due diligence, the detailed examination of each transaction which by its nature may be considered to be particularly vulnerable to be associated with money laundering offenses or terrorist financing, and informing the Company’s employees about the systems and procedures that the Company follows.
Elie Aoun, the CEO of CFI Cyprus, told Finance Magnates that these are “issues pertaining to some procedural and administrative matters.”
“CFI is happy with the closure of this matter and looks forward to working even more closely with the regulator. We would like to further clarify that this settlement concerns our CFI Cyprus entity only,” he added.
More Actions
In another regulatory action, the Cypriot supervisor withdrew the Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) license of SPA Financial Services Ltd, which came as the company expressly renounced the approval. It granted the same company authorization as the Alternative Investment Funds Manager (AIFM).
Meanwhile, CySEC recently fined and banned multiple former and current directors of the forex and CFDs broker operator, Maxigrid. Furthermore, the brokerage operator lost its CIF license last February.
