By Andy Traveller
Japanese and Canadian regulators warned against a total of three companies today for flouting regulations, and engaging in unauthorised trading activity. Japan Japan’s regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), came out with warnings today against two unauthorised firms believed to have been soliciting and offering trading services to Japanese clients.
The latest addition to its warning list is binary options broker JET Option (a brand of Capital Swift Investments). While its physical address is unknown, the JET Option website offers a Japanese version, despite the fact that the broker does not have permission to service Japanese clients.
Indeed, the regulator notes that even if a company offering trading in derivatives (binary options are considered as derivatives in Japan) is registered outside of Japan, it must have a Japanese license to target Japanese investors.
Moreover, the blacklisted broker also advertised binary options with expiration times as short as 30 seconds, which is another violation of Japanese rules, which prohibit such short-term options.
The second blacklisted broker is Option Trust. Again, the firm is accused of soliciting OTC (over-the-counter) derivatives to traders resident in the country, despite not possessing the requisite registration.
Tellingly, Option Trust’s website is exclusively in Japanese, although the trading company, PWS Service Ltd, purports to have a London address. British Columbia Meanwhile, the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC), the independent provincial agency responsible for regulating trading in securities in the Canadian province, has warned against an entity by the name of Broker Capital.
Broker Capital, which purports to have an office in Belize City, Belize, offers an online forex trading platform. According to BCSC, the Belizean firm has made unsolicited telephone calls to British Columbia (BC) residents, urging them to open an account.
Given that Broker Capital is not registered to trade in, or advise on, securities or exchange contracts in BC, residents are urged to “exercise caution” when dealing with such firms.