Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Russia’s commission for the regulation of relations on financial markets KROUFR has included binary options broker Interactive Option to its black list for treating clients incorrectly, the commission said earlier this week.
KROUFR warned that Interactive Options staff has been taking over client accounts, using the account details it has been provided, and depositing funds to clients’ trading accounts. Traders, however, receive no message notifications about such transactions, as they should. Once the funds are deposited with the broker, they could not be withdrawn, the commission noted. The broker used various pretexts to disable clients from getting their money back.
A notice on Interactive Option’s website indicates that as of 4 March,2016, its CySEC license was suspended for one month, during which it is not allowed to accept new clients, open new accounts or place new orders.
Interactive Option is a brand name of Pegase Capital Ltd., which license was suspended by the CySEC on 29 February for violating the authorization regulation and for not complying at all times with CySEC’s authorization and operating conditions. The regulator extended the license suspension in the beginning of March and later in the beginning of April.
The regulator did not say at the time why it decided to continue the suspension. Generally, license suspensions are imposed when a licensed entity may be putting at risk its own operation and its clients’ interests. In mid-October 2015, the CySEC fined Pegase Capital €300,000, consisting of about a dozen small fines, for not complying with the laws related to the licensing and operation of investment companies and the regulations for prevention of money laundering.
According to the CySEC’s website, Pegase Capital’s license was issued in February 2014 and is still suspended. The British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) has also issued warnings against Pegase Capital for providing binary options trading without being authorized. There are no binary trading service providers authorized to operate in Canada.
Pegase Capital operates under the binary options brands Interactive Option (www.interactiveoption.com; www.interactive-option.com)and HelloBrokers (www.hellobrokers.com) and the forex brand MTXPlus (www.mtxplus.com), as well as www.pegasecapital.com. All other websites have identical notices as the one posted on Interactive Option’s website, except for the websites of MTXPlus and Pegase Capital, which are not loading at all.
Pegase Capital does not hold licenses by any other authority, different than the Cypriot regulator.
KROUFR, set up in 2006, is a non-profit organization that aims to develop services and regulate the relationship between Russian participants of global financial markets, forex and binary options included. It provides mediation services in case of dispute between its members and their clients. Its members are online brokers TeleTrade, FreshForex, Forex Club, and Larson&Holz. Its black list currently consists of 17 entities.
KROUFR said earlier this it received 21 complaints last month, which is the second lowest value in its history after September 2015 when it received 20 complaints. Of these, 10 were against KROUFR members TeleTrade, ForexClub, and FreshForex
Source: KROUFR
