Much like the Whac-A-Mole game of 1970s fame, unregulated brokers continue to rear their vitamin-D deprived heads on the internet only to have them smacked down again by regulators.
This Tuesday, the (BaFin), Germany’s largest regulator, brought the hammer down on UB4TRADE when it announced that it was ordering the firm to cease operations and stop offering its services to the Volksdeutsche.
Will the company listen? Probably not. Criminals tend not to listen to regulatory authorities. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be criminals in the first place.
In the case of UB4TRADE we have proof of this.
BaFin – not the first
Last December, New Zealand’s Financial Market Authority that warned Kiwis against trading with the firm.
Then, three months later, a Danish regulator, the Financial Supervisory Authority, also , saying that it was offering its services to Danes without any regulatory approval.
Now it’s BaFin’s turn to try and persuade the people behind UB4TRADE to stop offering their services to people across the globe.
Interestingly, the regulator’s warning may have come a couple of weeks to late.
Unlike many of its unregulated peers, the owner of UB4TRADE – Finatex – is actually registered on the UK’s Companies House database.
A document released on Companies House by the broker’s owner on the 13th of November indicates that it has already shut down.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that UB4TRADE has ceased operations, even if the dodgy company behind it has. Unregulated brokers tend not to care much about formalities, such as registering themselves as proper companies or making it easy to see who it is running them.
So don’t be surprised if you see UB4TRADE’s ugly head rear itself again in the near future, just be happy there’s a regulator to smack it away with a regulatory warning.
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