Russia’s main financial regulator, the Central Bank of Russia, published on Tuesday a huge list of blacklisted financial service providers, that are prohibited from operating on Russian territory. There are some 1820 names on the list.
The central bank disclosed that many names on the list are, according to the authority, showing signs of being financial pyramid schemes and/or illicit money lenders. The bank will be blocking access to all these sites and will work with law enforcement if further action is necessary.
The bank came out of a press conference recently, where it was represented by the bank’s First Deputy Governor, and Director of the Department for Countering Unfair Practices, Sergey Shvetsov and Valery Lyakh respectively.
During the conference, the regulator mainly explained that its efforts at suppressing illicit activities led it to discover that its work was not enough to stop the illegal platforms from spreading rampantly in the country, as certain legal barriers were halting the progress. The bank will thus warn Russian citizens of these entities before taking any further action to stop them:
“…the stage of identifying and collecting evidence is about 30% of the entire process to suppression, which is the longest stage due to various procedural reasons. Thus, we made a decision to inform our citizens about [already] identified illegal participants before their activities are suppressed,”
From the 1820 companies included on the list, some 500 are FX brokers. Some of the entries are also cryptocurrency trading platforms and binary options trading firms.
Some big international FX brokerage barred by Russian authorities include Interactive Brokers, Forex Club, Swissquote, FXOpen, and more legitimate brokerages. Yet, many of the service providers on the list do not hold a license, meaning that they might be scams.
The Bank of Russia made it clear that all financial service companies must absolutely hold a license from the bank in order to operate on Russian soil.
