On 8 February, the Bank of Russia expanded the список компаний с признаками нелегальной деятельности на финансовом рынке. Eleven of them enticed participants with promises of earnings from cryptocurrencies.
Indicators of illegal professional participation in the securities market were found in the projects Stockgator, Mediapoint.Club and CZ-Changpeng FX (Christiana Financing).
Representatives of the latter asserted that they operate in the United States under the supervision of the Malta Financial Services Authority. At the same time, the company did not explain the origin of its name and did not even mention, in passing, the name of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao or any connection to him.
The Stockgator site directly stated that “in the last 12 months 74% of retail investor accounts lost money trading CFD with their company.”
Regulators identified signs of “financial pyramids” at firms Cryptoexperts Traders (Oraimo Capital), Doren LTD Investment Fund, Equiti Capital Markets, Garanti Miners, LepreCoin, Mining Hockey, Coin-Profitplc.com and Sirius.Best.
The Cryptoexperts Traders site states that the company was allegedly founded in 2018, but the corresponding domain was registered only in December 2022, according to WHOIS.
Coin-Profitplc.com listed Binance, Coinbase, Bitstamp, CEX.IO, KuCoin and other major crypto platforms among its partners.
Equiti Capital Markets reported operating in the United States under the supervision of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
Overall, during 2022 the Bank of Russia identified almost 5,000 illegal companies and financial pyramids. This was 85% higher than a year earlier. The damage for the past year amounted to about 6 billion rubles.
According to Valery Lyakh, director of the central bank’s department for countering unscrupulous practices, nearly half of pyramids attract payments in cryptocurrencies.
Earlier, in November 2021, the Bank of Russia blacklisted eight companies that offered “earnings from Bitcoin”.