Followers of Instaforex know about the history of the website :
1. Creation of instaforex.com by Instatrade OOD (Russia) in or about 2007 by Sergey Mayzus. At this stage, Instaforex is nothing more than one of the numerous Russian forex unregulated providers, with a particular attraction to Asia, and quickly develop on the South-East Asia markets. The business of Instaforex is legal (though methods might be a tiny bit questionable) in Russia, and, overseas, financial services regulators are not yet ready for the upcoming tidal wave of Russian kitchen outfits which is going to hit them and will take some time to respond.
2. First problem happens in 2011, when the CFTC indicts 14 companies amongst the most active on US territory, and (seemingly only, as we will see), shuts down their operations in the USA. On September 14th, 2011, INSTATRADE CORPORATION, a British Virgin Islands company d/b/a "Instaforex" enters into a Consent Order with the US Department of Justice (more on that later). Guess who is signing the agreement on behalf of INSTATRADE CORPORATION / Instaforex : Katerine Pobedinskaya, "Director of International Affairs" (the full docket of the case is here
https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/st5vnmup/district-of-columbia-district-court/commodity-futures-trading-commission-v-instatrade-corporation-et-al/ and the Consent Order itself is document 22).
3. Follows a relative period of quietness, until 2013, when an apparently extremely pissed off Sergey Mayzus is publishing, on the forum of KROUFR, one of the Russian Forex self-regulating bodies, a statement about him having been defrauded by Ildar Sharipov (the then current President of the Instaforex Group of Companies), associated with other individuals, including but not limited to Ekaterina Pobedinskaya. According to this statement, which is represented as no less than the content of a claim to the Russian Judicial Authorities, Instaforex would have gone rogue under the management of Ildar Sharipov, would be performing criminal activities, and Sergey Mayzus would have distanced himself from Instaforex.
4. FPA itself had relayed this statement (
https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/threads/instaforex-scandalized-rumors-or-truth.25566/page-2). What FPA did not relay was the ongoing feud between Sergey Mayzus and the user "isharipov", in which these two individuals were throwing at each other's face very precise accusations of money laundering, fraud, drugs, frame ups of people and illegal pornography (hey, remember that previous post of ours on Quasi Networks ?).
Unfortunately, KROUFR, which had let this thread survive for many years has very recently decided that apparently this was not such a good idea to have this on its site.
Luckily, someone, somewhere, has decided to have a sworn public officer making a record of the best parts of this "friendly" exchange, and to have an equally sworn translation from Russian performed, so some of it survives...But more on this (and on the reasons why KROUFR suddenly decided to make this content unaccessible) later.