Beware! EGL Sverige is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
EGL Sverige claims to be an award-winning forex broker offering its services in EU member states and the UK. However, fact-checking shows that it is not a regulated broker but a very suspicious site trying to hide its real owner. EGL Sverige is one of the websites to avoid at all costs. Let’s see exactly why.
EGL SVERIGE REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
EGL Sverige looks off even at first glance. The website is only available in Italian, but the registration form and client portal are in English. On the website you can see many things that have nothing to do with brokerage, but at the same time the website is missing a lot of information required by any legitimate business, such as Terms and Conditions.
A company named EGL Sverige AB is listed as the legal entity behind the EGL Sverige. An address in Sweden is listed, as well as contact numbers in Sweden, Italy and the United Kingdom:
Screenshots of supposed registration details and company profiles in financial outlets can be seen in the ‘Regulation’ section. But these screenshots are fake. There is no trace of the EGL Sverige AB in the register of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen), which licenses and regulates brokers in the Nordic country.
Any doubt that the EGL Sverige are fraudsters is dispelled by checking the website of the Italian financial regulator, the CONSOB. There we find an explicit warning that EGL Sverige is illegally offering financial services:
As EGL Sverige also has a UK contact number, we also checked the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) register. There we found information about a company called EGL Sverige AB, which in the past was passported into the UK, but can no longer undertake regulated business in the country.
This company’s contact email uses a completely different domain from EGL Sverige. It seems the scammers behind EGL Sverige are just using the name of a legitimate company that is no longer active.
Through the properties menu of the EGL Sverige trading platform, we found the name of another company – Solution Marketing Online Ltd. A legal entity with this name is registered in Dominica, a jurisdiction where the activities of brokerage firms are not regulated.
Under no circumstances should you trust your money to such websites full of false and contradictory information. Instead, you can turn to one of the many companies that really work under the supervision of respected regulatory bodies like Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) or Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK.
As their customer you will enjoy a number of guarantees including negative balance protection and guarantee for your funds if the broker goes bankrupt, which goes up to EUR 20,000 in EU and 85,000 GBP in the UK. Regulations in the UK and EU include some important measures designed to improve investor protection and promote market integrity and transparency, such as transaction reporting. Regulated brokers are also required to segregate their operational funds from the client’s money.
EGL SVERIGE TRADING SOFTWARE
EGL Sverige uses one of the most popular trading platforms in the industry – MetaTrader 5 (MT5). Here’s what the software looks like:
However, the platform is not configured for EGL Sverige. The provider of the software is the website platformsfx, which is based in Sofia, Bulgaria, but its business seems to be mainly focused on the Arab world. 
As mentioned, a company name other than EGL Sverige – Solution Marketing Online Ltd- is found through the platform settings. Since the credentials provided by EGL Sverige can be used to log into the platform, it seems this is the actual company behind the EGL Sverige website.
It is advisable to contact one of the many legitimate brokers that offer MT5 or the still very popular MT4. These platforms have established themselves as leaders because they offer a wide range of features, including a wide variety of options for customization, multiple account usage, designing and implementing custom scripts for automated trading and backtesting trade strategies.
EGL SVERIGE TRADING CONDITIONS
The EGL Sverige website does not describe different account types, nor is there any information about the trading parameters such as leverage, spread, minimum deposit, commissions, etc.
Curiously, alongside forex, commodities and stocks, among the products supposedly offered by EGL Sverige are listed pension plans and investments in legal cannabis businesses. Not for the first time, we came across a fake broker targeting Italian speakers and offering investments in recreational drugs. The same is the case, for example, with UK Alpha Fund.
Spread levels of 2.5 pips can be seen in the MT5 platform. Levels above 2 pips are considered too high and disadvantageous for the trader.
In the platform the leverage is set at 1:200. This significantly exceeds the levels allowed in the jurisdictions in which EGL Sverige claims to operate. High leverage creates the opportunity for more significant profit, but correspondingly increases the risk of sudden and excessive losses. All leading regulators therefore restrict leverage for retail traders. The EU regulators and FCA limit leverage to 1:30 for trading in major currency pairs and even lower levels for more volatile assets.
EGL SVERIGE DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
The logos of a number of popular payment methods can be seen on the EGL Sverige website, including PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and Sofort, as well as various crypto wallets. However, only one option, credit card, is visible in the deposit menu, and it is not active unless the account is verified.
There is no information about fees, minimum amounts and withdrawal conditions.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Stories of people getting rich from cryptocurrencies tempt many to try their luck in the financial markets. But you have to be very careful not to fall into the clutches of the many scammers lurking in the online space. These scammers only pose as brokers and lure you in with promises to take on the confusing aspects of investing for you.
If you make contact with such scammers they will first convince you to give them a small initial sum of a few hundred dollars. They may even fool you for a while that your investment is generating incredible profits to convince you to give them a larger amount. But your money won’t really be invested. And when you try to withdraw your supposed profits or even your deposit, you will find that it is impossible.
The scammers may tell you that all your investments have been lost by a sudden change in the market. Or they’ll point you to clauses hidden in their Terms and Conditions that say withdrawing your money is only possible after you meet impossibly high minimum trading volume requirements. And they can simply disappear because these scam sites hide behind fake names and offshore companies that are not subject to rules and regulations.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
If you find yourself a victim of scammers, you should inform the relevant authorities in your country and spread the word online to warn other potential victims. However, the chances of getting your money back are not high.
If you used a credit/debit card for the transactions, you could ask for a chargeback. However, such requests can be disputed if you have provided the fraudsters with proof of identity such as a copy of an ID. Under no circumstances should you trust people on the internet who claim they can recover your money for an upfront fee. These too are certainly scammers.
