MiCA as part of the Digital Finance Package of the European Union The European Parliament adopted the new Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets (MiCAR) in March 2023. According to the announcement the main goals for MiCAR are: Protecting consumers Creating regulatory harmonization, closing regulatory arbitrage loopholes and allowing
Crypto scams are a plague Although we are in a crypto winter with the crash on the markets also driving down the crypto valuations, we still receive emails from victims about scammers trying to convince them to invest in promising crypto ventures. So, crypto scams are still a plague, and
The phasing out process of PAYVISION ends today (June 30, 2022)! On October 28, 2021, ING announced that it would start phasing out the business activities of its subsidiary PAYVISION as a payment service provider (PSP) and acquirer. According to the announcement, this was done after a thorough evaluation of
Administrative fines and bans for Maxigrid Ltd Finally, on June 17th 2022, The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) took action against Maxigrid Ltd. It announced administrative fines totalling € 210,000 and bans against four exercising directors for management functions in Cyprus Investment Firms (C.I.F.s). In specific, CySEC imposed the
The professionalism of today’s cybercriminal organizations (in short: the scammers’ industry) correspond to the professionalism and procedures of legitimate big international corporations. Technology, development activities, human resources, accounting, finance, marketing, legal departments are carried out by different departments independently under the professional leadership of the management people hired by criminals.
Kobenhavns Andelskasse (a/k/a Copenhagen Cooperative Fund or KBH Andelskasse), a small Danish-regulated bank, collected and transferred hundreds of millions of stolen money to boiler room scammers in 2017 and 2018 after it got hijacked by scammers. EFRI represents more than 1.100 European consumers who have been ripped off by
Our research shows that Postbank Germany (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank) was definitely “the bank to go” for scammers in 2016 – 2020 to open bank accounts for shell companies. We collected the data of more than 90 shell companies with bank accounts with different Postbank branches all over Germany.
As we have seen so often in the past years, the European authorities have been mainly concerned with protecting the interests of the business users in drafting the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and have forgotten about the so much-needed consumer protection. It is about time to enhance consumer protection in
The 1st Criminal Division in Bamberg, Germany, has submitted a request for a ruling to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for the next steps in the Gal BARAK case on June 4, 2021. The pending ruling of the ECJ will not only be important in the criminal case of
EFRI is the abbreviation for European Funds Recovery Initiative. The legal entity behind this Initiative is a not-for-profit organisation (EFRI-Association) registered in Vienna, Austria. Here you can read the statutes of the not-for-profit organization. Read More
