Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa, also known as Consob, has blacklisted an additional 28 financial service companies. Over the past year, the Italian financial market regulator blocked a long list of financial companies that have failed to achieve compliance.
28 Italian financial platforms blocked
The recently blocked firms were found to violate the rules put in place by the Finance Police. The Finance Police issued a report against the 28 firms, which prompted Consob to react with a blacklist that prevented the websites of these firms from being accessed by clients.
Consob and the Finance Police have agreed to join forces to unveil illegal investment platforms by creating a joint workforce. The majority of the recently blocked firms are those dealing in cryptocurrency investments. The regulator noted that the firms are offering services illegally in Italy.
Some of the firms that have been blacklisted are major players in the cryptocurrency sector. These firms include Gate.io, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms and SimpleFX.
Other firms that have also been included in this list include Bitcoin-evolutionpro, Bitcoin ERA, Finmax, Maxbit and EliteCrypto Trade.
Consob’s blacklist increases to 593 firms
The recent blacklisting of the 28 firms has increased the total number of firms blacklisted by the Italian regulator to 593. The financial market regulator has blocked the access of these firms to their domains and networks.
Firms added to this blacklist are basically put out of operations because no one in Italy can access their websites. The Italian financial regulator has the authority to block the websites of these firms, which gives it more power than most of the European regulators. The power to block websites has come in handy for the regulatory body in banning unlicensed crypto platforms from operating in Italy.
The regulatory body noted that “Consob draws investors’ attention to the importance of adoption the greatest diligence in order to make informed investment choices, adopting common-sense behaviour, essential to safeguard their savings: these include, for websites that offer financial services, checking in advance that the operator with whom they are investing is authorized, and, for offers of financial products, that a prospectus has been published.”
