Trader pays £275k... after raking in millions

SCAM investment firm Banc de Binary has paid €300,000 (£275,000) to the government of Cyprus to settle charges brought by the country’s Securities & Exchange Commission. It alleges that the Israeli-run company committed several violations of investor protection laws.

The penalty is small change to Banc de Binary and its boss Oren Laurent. They raked in hundreds of millions of pounds posing as an investment firm for basically taking toss-ofa-coin bets on whether stock markets and commodity prices would rise or fall. Staff posed as professional advisers, but almost all investors lost heavily.

The Mail on Sunday has led the fight against Banc de Binary, first exposing it in 2013. It falsely claimed to be based in New York’s Wall Street, but then won a genuine licence from the debt-ridden Cypriot government.

Under EU rules, this allowed it into Britain and to enter its name on the Financial Conduct Authority’s register without vetting and without protection from the Financial Ombudsman Service or Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Public warnings against Banc de Binary were issued by the authorities in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even Belize.

But the FCA sat firmly on the fence, bizarrely claiming that, though the company appeared on its register, it was really a gambling firm for which the FCA had no responsibility.

Meanwhile, false information was issued regularly by Banc de Binary’s representative in London, Mattison PR.

In 2017, Banc de Binary ceased trading. Finally, in March this year, the FCA issued a total ban on binary options trading in the UK. The slothful watchdog decided: ‘The new rules tackle widespread concerns about the inherent risks of these products and the poor conduct of the firms selling them. This has led to consumer harm in the UK and internationally through large and unexpected trading losses.’ And so the stable door was bolted.