The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) earlier today published an announcement about a decision of its Board to impose a EUR 20,000 monetary penalty on Trademarker (Cyprus) Ltd, which offers its services via the SkyFX brand.
The Commission has found that the investment company has breached the Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Markets Law of 2007, with the biggest part of the fine stemming from the broker’s failure to ensure the appropriateness of shareholders.
In particular, CySEC has found that the company violated Article 28 (1) of the Law, which stipulates that an investment firm should always comply with the conditions under which it was granted authorization. The watchdog says this article was violated along with Article 13 (shareholders suitability) and Article 18 (2) (d) (outsourcing execution of investment services/activities) of the Law. The breaching of these three articles resulted in a fine of EUR 10,000.
The other half of the fine relates to outsourcing of the company’s services to a third-party in Israel. The company failed to inform CySEC of this outsourcing in a timely manner (this led to a fine of EUR 5,000) and also assigned the job to a non-licensed entity in Israel (this led to a penalty of further EUR 5,000).
In determining the size of the fine, CySEC took into account the seriousness of corporate actions that may affect negatively the clients’ rights and the ability of the watchdog to supervise the business. At the same time, the regulator considered as a mitigating factor that Trademarker had not committed similar violations in the past.
The company commented:
“The ownership of SkyFX and Trademarker would like to acknowledge the following, in regards to the fine issued by CySEC to our company on 20 May 2015, the investigation stems from poor practices which were reported by clients in August of 2013, prior to our purchase of the SkyFX/Trademarker brand and company. While we are pleased this matter has now come to a close, we feel it is correct to acknowledge this very lengthy investigation began nearly two years ago.”
To view the original announcement on the fine (in Greek), click here.