Anyone interested in trading retail binary options online should be aware that scams are abundant in the field and therefore all potential clients should always do a thorough research about a broker’s good standing before committing their funds. Besides checking the websites of financial regulators, another useful source for such information are independent binary options brokers guides such as ours here at binaryoptionswire.com.
If you are a regular reader of our posts, then perhaps you remember that a little over a year ago we had run a piece on the announcement by the Cypriot regulator CySEC regarding Cedar Finance and the fact that its then parent company, namely the CIF T.B.S.F. Best Strategy Finance Limited, has been found to be in breach of certain legal provisions causing the regulator to suspend its license. CySEC had then highlighted that “the Company cannot, pursuant to section 26(5) of the above mentioned Law, provide directly or via its website www.cedarfinance.com investment and ancillary services, while the suspension of the authorization is in force.”
A few months later the Cedar Finance was revoked by the regulator but it appears that this was not the end of the story. According to a new CySEC announcement, publicized on 19 March 2015 in the form of a warning to investors, the websites www.cedarfinance.com, www.regaloptions.com and www.brokeragecapital.com now seem to be owned and operated by ‘P.M. Investment Capital Ltd’. As CySEC clarifies, although this company did receive a license by CySEC last year (no. 243/14), authorizing it t to provide investment services in relation to financial instruments in its jurisdiction, it is currently not allowed to provide such services, through the above-mentioned websites and/or in any other way, as it has not yet complied with CySEC’s recommendations, which were set as a prerequisite for the activation of its license.
CySEC also informs the investing public that it is further investigating the matter and urges investors to be duly cautious when choosing the persons to conduct business with.
In an direct way of admitting that something is indeed wrong, the Cedar Finance appears to be down, with the official explanation given to visitors being : “Service under maintenance We are under maintenance at the moment and will be back online within a few days. If you are our client, we will notify you by email as soon as we are back. We apologize for any inconvenience. Cedar Finance Team”
However, the other two websites mentioned in the CySEC warning and operated by P.M. Investment Capital seem to up and running as usual.
In relevant our post last year we had remarked that the people behind Cedar Finance “are not so good friends with the truth”, while we have also refrained from including this broker in our list of recommended brokers as featured on our brokers’ comparison table, because we also consider that they are not as transparent and reliable as they should have been and investors are better off avoiding them altogether.
We will remain vigilant and inform you of any developments and also urge you to share with us and your fellow traders any experiences you might have had with this broker.
