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