Italy's financial market watchdog continued its action against suspected and fraudulent financial service providers, blocking access to five websites in its latest action.。The five sites are said to be providing services illegally in Italy.。

Clone Broker

The blocked websites are FP Invest, XTB Empire Ltd, PRIMUSLTD and Simple Trading or Simple Trade。These names are similar to some well-known brands in the retail trading industry, thus becoming its clone broker。Earlier, regulators also took action against several other websites that clone big brands.。

As always, these black sites offer high-risk financial instruments, including margin forex and contracts for difference (CFD) for indices, bonds, stocks and even cryptocurrencies, with one claiming to have an office in London.。

Action by regulators

Italy's Consob has been aggressively cracking down on financial services platforms operating illegally under its jurisdiction.。The regulator has blacklisted 945 companies since July 2019.。

Through legislation, the Italian authorities authorized Consob to take action against financial fraud and also authorized Consob to block access to these websites at the domain level.。

Consob said: "The Authority has taken advantage of the powers granted by the Growth Decree, under which Consob can order internet connection service providers to prohibit access from Italy to websites offering financial services without the necessary authorisation.。"

"Internet connection providers operating in Italy are carrying out website blackout activities, and the actual blackout may take several days due to technical reasons."。

Consob is not the only financial market regulator to screen for illegal platform names, with regulators in the UK, Cyprus and Spain also regularly publishing the names of illegal websites offering illegal services.。These regulators also take further action on any lapses by regulated entities。For example, the Cyprus regulator, which owns multiple forex and CFD brokers, fines the brokers and even revokes their licenses.。