Platform disgrace – Newspaper Kommersant No. 225 (7426) of 03.12.2022
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The financial regulator has identified three illegal investment platform operators (IPOs). This is the first case of detection of such fraud in the market. However, there may be more such illegal immigrants on the crowdlending market: it is difficult to identify them, and it is almost impossible to compensate for the losses of investors.
The Bank of Russia for the first time revealed illegal operators of investment platforms. Fan.Money, the financial group “Expert”, which unites nine services, and the investment platform “1STARTER” were blacklisted by the regulator. All of them were not included in the register maintained by the Central Bank. “These companies promise high guaranteed income in their advertising. However, at the same time, the investor does not have the opportunity to check the reality and quality of the announced investment projects through independent sources, to track the movement of invested funds. In addition, illegal companies create non-competitive conditions in the market,” the regulator points out.
In total, from the beginning of 2021 to December 2 of this year, the Bank of Russia identified more than 7.6 thousand illegal financial institutions. Mostly these are financial pyramids, illegal creditors and illegal participants in the securities market.
Crowdlending (crowdfunding) — a way to raise funds in a business using special investment platforms. Money can be borrowed, exchanged for a share of future profits. Funds are provided by investors – individuals or legal entities. Legislative regulation of the activities of investment platforms in Russia was introduced from January 1, 2020, one of the main requirements of the law is the registration of the platform in the register of the Bank of Russia. 67 investment platform operators are registered in the register of the Central Bank. At the end of nine months of 2022, the volume of loans issued on the platforms was estimated at RUB 6.13 billion.
The Bank of Russia believes that in the case of illegal operators of investment platforms, it is important to warn not only citizens who are potential investors, but also companies that are interested in raising funds through crowdfunding platforms. At the same time, illegal companies undermine competition and trust in the financial market. The information provided by such companies cannot be verified, and there is a risk of investing in non-existent assets, the Central Bank notes.
“Essentially, any Russian legal entity or individual entrepreneur can attract investments,” notes Sergey Uchitel, partner at the Pen & Paper Bar Association. “This explains the fact that platforms have begun to be used as one of the ways to fraudulently take money from gullible investors.” According to him, long-established schemes can be used here – “aggressive and large-scale advertising, the presence of” offers that cannot be refused, “double sites, and so on.” “Platforms that are not included in the register are advertised as they wish, they undergo any moderation of search engines, while legal financial intermediaries do not even have any opportunity to advertise the real sector projects being placed – you can only advertise your brand,” Kirill Kosminsky, Executive Director of the Association of Investment Platform Operators, describes the situation. .
At the same time, if the operator has not legalized its activities in Russia properly, this means that no payments to those affected by its activities are provided by law, as well as the intervention of the Central Bank in the contractual relationship between the investor and the operator, says the managing partner of the law firm Ickert and Partners Pavel Ickert.
Information about the activities of three companies without registration in the register, which was revealed by the Central Bank, the regulator has already transferred to law enforcement agencies, as announced on December 2. In principle, two scenarios are possible, says Yury Kolesnikov, managing partner of the MoneyFriends investment platform. It may turn out that the platforms provide real services, no one was harmed by their activities, there are no victims, but the platforms are not included in the register of the Bank of Russia, are not supervised by it, which creates risks of violating the rights of consumers of financial services. Such actions can be qualified as illegal entrepreneurial activity. The second option is that there are already deceived investors who will write relevant statements to law enforcement agencies. In this case, the actions of the platform organizers can be qualified as fraud. However, the problem is also that it is simply not possible to establish the ultimate beneficiaries of such “services”, Mr. Ickert points out.
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