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Problem IronFx condemned over abusive contract terms

I am having an issue with a company

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The Cyprus Cyprus Consumer Protection Service has issued on 22.12.2017 a Decision against IronFx contract terms being unfair and non-compliant with EU rules on consumer protection. You can find a translation of the decision here https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3pwwf4jaue2e16/CPSDEcisionEN.docx?dl=0

The Consumer Protection Service is the competent authority for examining the compliance of Cypriot firms with EU consumer protection rules

The Decision states that IronFx contract terms violate directive 93/13 on Unfair Contract Terms , as transposed in Cyprus law. This means that mentioned contract terms are no longer binding for consumers, i.e. are completely void.

The CPS issued this decision upon complaints by damaged clients, whose withdrawal requests were rejected. As a matter of fact, exactly these contract terms were used by IronFx in order to withhold clients money.

Cyprus regulator CySEC has never stopped this practice, despite several complaints. The small country thinks that it can afford to ignore EU legislation.

Damaged clients can use the Decision of the Consumer Protection Service in order to support their claims against IronFx at court or before the Financial Ombudsman
 
......and who has been writing these unfair contract terms, any Cypriote Lawyers Names, just to get them indicted , and jailed !

Andreas Neocleous & Son, ok they already are jailed, but many more to come !

Unfortunately very common practices from these brokers lawyers, just like the SHUT UP CONTRACTS, which victims need to sign, in order for some partial or what ever fund recovery, completely illegal !
 
So has CySec shut down IronFx operations like any competent regulator would?

If they are so bad by the regulator's own admission, why are they still allowed to operate in broad daylight?
 
IRONFX director Markos Kashiouris object of criminal investigation in Germany ! SCAM !!!
 

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Dear all,

Thank you for your continuing posts and comments.

Your constructive approach is appreciated and welcomed as it provides a sensible discussion forum for us to engage using facts rather than hearsay.

Please understand our position in clearing what was indeed proven to be a multitude of repeated hostile, baseless and defamatory allegations by non-clients. This sometimes required us to take a forcefully factual approach in order to stop purely defamatory threads without a valid client claim.

In our effort at FPA we have answered all threads with facts. We have identified all real clients and successfully dealt with their claims. We have also answered to a multitude of postings by non-clients. You may have noticed that these postings are just the same things going round and round and round in a merry and baseless go-round.

The undisputed facts are:

1. We have been operational for 8 years, one of the longest established global Brokers.

2. We are regulated by the four premier regulators in the FX world (FCA, ASIC, CySEC and FSB) with full licencing and with an absolutely clean record of conduct. No fines and no warnings whatsoever. To this effect, we don’t think that e.g. the FCA would turn a blind eye to any misdemeanours.

3. We never breached any Capital Adequacy requirements in any of our regulated jurisdictions.

4. We have had the same auditors since inception with a clean audit record throughout.

5. We have not had a single Court judgement in any jurisdiction against us.

6. The “huge number of complaints” respond to a mere 0.2% of our client base, most are old and have been dealt with.

7. We have passed significant due diligence as part of various investment processes in our 8 years of operations. This has culminated in the recent investment by a regulated fund in our company.

The allegations merry go round (same things posted again and again in different threads) are as follows and concern 10 repeated statements which are presented below in no particular order:

1. “$176m in lost client funds”: see points (2) and (4) in the list above. We are one of the few Brokers that hold the client funds on-balance sheet and are therefore audited. Some regulators e.g. FCA also require daily reconciliations. The Auditor General’s report was a report by a non-expert criticising primarily CySEC processes. This was spun out as “confirmation of a $176m hole”. We have taken measures since to correct this misunderstanding but unfortunately the report cannot be retracted as it is a mammoth annual report covering all departments of the Cyprus Government.

2. “Petitions in the European Parliament”: As you rightly point out, the fact that no one has signed the petition “in the last 5 days,” points out the defamatory nature of these allegations. Please also note that the last petition to the European Parliament in July 2017 plainly confirmed the sole jurisdiction of the Republic of Cyprus in dealing with any complaints against CySEC regulated entities. The statutes on National Sovereignty are very clear and any additional petitions (if ever lodged) will have a similar fate.

3. “German criminal cases against members of management”: to-date we are not aware of any cases against management. The German document that appeared in some of the threads was just a confirmation that no case exists. It was misrepresented as being a criminal case against management. On the contrary, we have won a seminal defamation case at the Munich Court against a paid-for defamator and we have obtained a cease-and-desist order.

4. “Clients are consumers”: we have won seminal court cases in this respect. The EU law is clear in this respect that clients are not consumers. The Cyprus Consumer Protection Service opinion was just an unfortunate and wrongful interpretation of the legal framework. We have initiate legal action in this respect. We also stress that this is not a Court decision.

5. “Unpaid rents”: against a misrepresentation of the decision of the Junior Court in Cyprus in a simple rent dispute. This was overturned in our favour at the High Court.

6. “BBC documentary”: this is purely a defamatory attempt by a disgruntled ex-client that happened to be an ex-BBC employee. Was spun out as a “BBC documentary”. No BBC documentaries exist on the subject matter and indeed no articles exist in the mainstream press (other than positive articles in e.g. FT or Wall Street Journal).

7. “Class action lawsuits”: we confirm none is in existence and we have never been notified of one. A couple of comments in threads concern shady law firms trying to procure unsuspecting clients. They never get anywhere as there are no real claims and no one is willing to pay legal fees.

8. “Legal action against one of our lawyers”: we have global operations and we engage a multitude a legal firms (c. 30 globally). We cannot comment on individual law firms and any case against a law firm is clearly not a misdemeanour against the company.

9. “€335,000 fine”: this was a settlement with CySEC following their investigation of the 10-largest Cyprus Brokers in 2015. No party admitted wrongdoing and the matter is closed since November 2015. IronFX was the only company under investigation that did not receive a fine. All the remaining Brokers in the investigation received fines.

10. “Amazon Book”: this a free book that it is just a write-up of the points above. We have no additional comments as to the motives.

As you can see, facts pay a very clear picture of an organised defamation attempt.

As per FPA member @BinaryLad suggested, in thread https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ironfx-com.14830/page-5, we welcome your suggestion for a “falsely accused broker” section where we can post final and factual responses for the 10 false allegations above that get repeated throughout the FPA threads.

For any other issues or repeated defamatory commentary or false allegations you want to post on the FPA site please refer to the “IronFX – Falsely Accused Broker” thread: https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ironfx-falsely-accused-broker.54115/


We would also expect this effort will result in the removal of the “Scam Broker” rating by the FPA.

Regards,
 
As you can see, facts pay a very clear picture of an organised defamation attempt.

If IronFX is such a great broker why is there an 'organised defamation attempt'? I am personally not a client at the moment, but after everything I've read, including this post by IronFX, it doesn't convince me the company is good, or it has gotten better. Reputation is very important to maintain and IronFX failed in maintaining it. IronFX is labeled as Scam on FPA, which is not a very easy rating to get, there are multiple attempts to get the broker to cooperate with the harmed client, and IronFx did not cooperate at least 4 times. IronFx has published multiple fake positive reviews(as reported by FPA moderation team), is this also some conspiracy to make IronFX look bad?!?

IronFx seems to have joined the ranks of InstaForex(another confirmed scam here on FPA). A scam broker that continues to operate.
 
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 andno meaningful operation. As for the ASIC regulation, it only applies to a small subsidiary and the ASICforced 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 adecision 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)
 
The Cyprus Cyprus Consumer Protection Service has issued on 22.12.2017 a Decision against IronFx contract terms being unfair and non-compliant with EU rules on consumer protection. You can find a translation of the decision here https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3pwwf4jaue2e16/CPSDEcisionEN.docx?dl=0

The Consumer Protection Service is the competent authority for examining the compliance of Cypriot firms with EU consumer protection rules

The Decision states that IronFx contract terms violate directive 93/13 on Unfair Contract Terms , as transposed in Cyprus law. This means that mentioned contract terms are no longer binding for consumers, i.e. are completely void.

The CPS issued this decision upon complaints by damaged clients, whose withdrawal requests were rejected. As a matter of fact, exactly these contract terms were used by IronFx in order to withhold clients money.

Cyprus regulator CySEC has never stopped this practice, despite several complaints. The small country thinks that it can afford to ignore EU legislation.

Damaged clients can use the Decision of the Consumer Protection Service in order to support their claims against IronFx at court or before the Financial Ombudsman

Dear Alphabeta,

Without identifying yourself as a client of the company, you continue posting repeated and baseless defamatory allegations.

For your latest attempt to defamate the company (or any other issues or repeated defamatory commentary or false allegations you want to post on the FPA site) please refer to the “IronFX – Falsely Accused Broker” thread: https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ironfx-falsely-accused-broker.54115/ and in particular Point (4) of the said posting.

Should you have any specific, factual complaint, we welcome you once again to identify yourself as a client of the company by providing the relevant details.

Thank you

......and who has been writing these unfair contract terms, any Cypriote Lawyers Names, just to get them indicted , and jailed !

Andreas Neocleous & Son, ok they already are jailed, but many more to come !

Unfortunately very common practices from these brokers lawyers, just like the SHUT UP CONTRACTS, which victims need to sign, in order for some partial or what ever fund recovery, completely illegal !

Dear oscarra,

Without identifying yourself as a client of the company, you continue posting repeated and baseless defamatory allegations.

For your latest attempt to defamate the company (or any other issues or repeated defamatory commentary or false allegations you want to post on the FPA site) please refer to the “IronFX – Falsely Accused Broker” thread: https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ironfx-falsely-accused-broker.54115/ and in particular Point (8) of the said posting.

Should you have any specific, factual complaint, we welcome you once again to identify yourself as a client of the company by providing the relevant details.

Thank you
 
So has CySec shut down IronFx operations like any competent regulator would?

If they are so bad by the regulator's own admission, why are they still allowed to operate in broad daylight?

Dear 4evermaat,

Thank you for your comment.

We refer you to our last reply relating to your case.
Please look at the link below, post #36: https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ironfx-whistleblower-corner.53703/page-4

For the record we would like to note that from your conduct in the forum so far, it is evident that you are not genuine clients of the Company. You have chosen to keep your identity undisclosed by using nicknames and usernames with the sole purpose of engaging in defamatory comments, untrue and unfounded statements. The Company has repeatedly requested that you provide your particulars either via this forum or via e-mail to a dedicated email address, however, you have not done so to date in order to allow the Company to attend to any genuine query you may have.

We note that your continuous defamatory attempts are aimed at creating impressions, disgrace and damage to the Company’s reputation and goodwill. Such inappropriate conduct is not welcome by the Company and is against ethics and morals. Unless you have a genuine query, the Company does not intend to attend to any further unsubstantiated comments or statements.

For your latest attempt to defamate the company (or any other issues or repeated defamatory commentary or false allegations you want to post on the FPA site) please refer to the “IronFX – Falsely Accused Broker” thread: https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/ironfx-falsely-accused-broker.54115/ and in particular Point (9) of the said posting.

Regards
 
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