Dear IronFx representative,
The undisputed facts are:
1.You have suffered a sharp decline in turnover and clients after refusing to return clients’ funds in a widespread and systemic manner. You never had 1 million clients: all Cypriot brokers together have 1,200,000 clients (
CySEC report), the
largest ones being XM and FxPro.
2.The idea of not returning clients’ funds by invoking “
Abusive trading criteria” based on assumptions, without any evidence, was an idea of your jailed lawyers.
It was not an idea of sales people, because sales people know the huge impact of bad reputation on volumes and revenues.
(Instead of paying lawyers, you should pay your clients, it would come cheaper)
3.You are not FCA regulated and therefore you are not object of FCA supervision. You have a subsidiary which is FCA regulated, but this company has not a full license and
no meaningful operation. As for the ASIC regulation, it only applies to a small subsidiary and the ASIC
forced you to correct the disclosure.
4.There are a lot of judgments against you and please expect that they are made public. Let’s begin with a
decision of the Financial Ombudsman, forcing you to return the funds of a clients which you had illegally withheld for 2 years
5.At least 2500 complaints were filed to the Financial Ombudsman against you. This is a huge number.
6.The investment with Nukkleus failed due to lack of regulatory approval. And the current investment by a Singapore company is still subject to regulatory approval (AML check pursuant to Art. 13 MiFID II)
7.A shortage of 176 million in clients’ money was confirmed by a public Cypriot authority. The
General Auditor Report was not modified or retracted and is still a public document.
(BTW: Complaining to the General Auditor was a brilliant idea of your landlord)
8.The
Petition before the EU Parliament has not failed at all, but is still open and there will be a new hearing. We expect the ESMA hitting you and/or the whole Cypriot forex industry the hard way : read the
statement.
9.Retail traders are consumers: here the
Decision of a Hungarian court of appeal and the
Decision of Cyprus Consumer Protection Service.
10.The fine of 335.000 which you settled with the CySEC was almost the highest fine which is possible under the current legislation ($ 350.000).
But this legislation is to be changed in order to implement MiFID 2. The fines foreseen by Art. 70 MiFID 2 are at least €
5.000.000 or twice the benefit derived from the infringement.
(A fine of 352 million would be adequate in your case)