The ongoing saga with Iron FX casts a shadow on European financial client protection
The Iron FX saga has now been ongoing for over three years. The retail broker is being investigated for missing client money, and claimants have been seeking advice from regulatory bodies in both Cyprus and wider Europe. It now seems that some clients have grown tired of waiting for Cyprus regulators to finish investigating the matter.
After the national audit office of Cyprus found a huge financial black hole in "a large Cyprus investment firm", CySec opened an investigation and told clients to contact the Cyprus Financial Ombudsman Service.
With investigations still dragging on, some clients are now seeking their own legal action against the firm. Others have escalated the issue to the European Ombudsman, and even the European Commission. This action comes as the European Securities and Markets Authority has dismissed complaints against CySec and the CFOS for their delays in dealing with the matter, by saying that all cases (to CySec and CFOS) are deemed to have been addressed appropriately.
However, the ESMA themselves took five months to respond to a Hungarian customer who raised a complaint to the European Ombudsman.
Our friends at Finance Magnates have the lowdown on the story and it highlights that Europe still has plenty of work to do on the regulatory front. As we hear comments from European and ECB bigwigs who are getting ready to bend over backwards to ease Brexit banks through European regs so they can move to Europe, it looks like scant regard is being given to European retail investors in the meantime. One rule for one and all that.
Europe: Will bend over for the big banks but the rest of us can go whistle
