Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Malta’s financial regulator, the MFSA, warned the “public in Malta and abroad” that the forex brokers TradingBanks and MXTrade, both owned by Grizzly Limited are not “licenced or otherwise authorised by the MFSA to provide any investment or other financial services which are required to be licenced or otherwise authorised under Maltese law.”
According to the regulator, Grizzly Limited claims it has an address in Malta, which has been recently changed.
“The MFSA strongly advises investors and consumers of financial services that prior to making any investment or entering into any financial services transaction they should ascertain that the entity with whom the investment or transaction is being made is authorised to provide such services by the MFSA or another financial services regulatory authority as applicable”, the watchdog admonished.
In the fine print at the bottom of the page TradingBanks states it is “not licenced or authorized by the MFSA to provide any investment or other financial services in or from Malta, which are required to be licenced or authorized under Maltese law” and does not accept clients from the EU.
Same goes for MXTrade, except for the EU clients part. On the contrary, MXTrade claims to offer its services across the EU, the EEA, in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Japan, India and the US. According to numerous posts on MXTrade’s Facebook page, clients have lots of trouble withdrawing their funds, which is much in in unison with the complaints against the company made with Russia’s SRO KROUFR.
One publication on Facebook even accuses MXTrade and TradingBanks of running a Ponzi scheme.
This is the fourth time TradingBanks appears on a warning list this year.
Most recently Hong Kong’s regulator, the SFC, has added it to its roster of unregulated entities, because Grizzly Limited used a Hong Kong bank address.
In the spring the Swiss regulator – FINMA – warned that the broker, which back then was owned and operated by the Belize-licensed Lau Global Services Corporation is not authorized to provide financial services in Switzerland.
In May South Africa’s regulator – FSB – also warned of TradingBanks. Then the broker claimed it was owned by Grizzly Limited. a financial services company authorized and regulated to trade on financial markets including hedging, markets arbitrage, risk management and speculation, with a business address in Malta.
