French Financial Watchdogs Update List of Unauthorized Forex Brokers

France’s financial market regulators, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR), have updated a periodic list of websites that offer Forex trading, for which no authorized investment services provider licence could be clearly identified.

The new list supersedes the previously published iteration on January 5, 2015. It is the twelfth such alert issued by the AMF and ACPR since July 7, 2011.

The ACPR, or French Prudential Supervisory Authority, is an independent administrative authority which monitors the activities of banks and insurance companies in France. It operates under the auspices of the French central bank, Banque de France.

The AMF recommends forex customers to open accounts “only with financial institutions authorized to do business in France.” The AMF also warns market participants that “any unauthorized intermediaries run the risk of criminal sanctions” and advises against “responding to offers from any broker on the published lists.”

Any financial intermediary offering or recommending investments must be on the list of financial institutions authorized to do business in France, according to the regulators.

The AMF also publishes a separate list of unauthorized binary options websites operating in the country.