Russia’s FAS, or the Federal Antimonopoly Service, has taken note of the recent rise in law violations that the financial services industry’s advertisers have made. Notably, more than a fifth of all advertising violations come from the finance industry alone.

22.1% Of All Advertisement Violations From Finance Sector

Through the FAS’s 2019 report, the regulator had estimated that advertisements alone accounted for 22.1% of the entire nation’s advertising rules violations within that year. This marks a significant growth from 2018’s numbers, which had the proportion recorded at 12.75% at the time.

The FAS went further, stating that financial services stood as the one with the most significant number of violations within the year of 2019, beating every other segment of Russia in this dishonorable competition.

The Many Examples

It’s been reported on numerous occasions, as one would imagine with that amount of violations, that the FAS has acted against various forex companies due to their ads. Back in October of 2019, the FAS’ Moscow branch had issued out a statement in regards to the InstaForex company’s advertising message. This comes after a probe was initiated into the ads InstaForex distributed through the platform going by Yandex. The advertisement itself claimed that InstaForex was a broker fully licensed by the Russian Central Bank.

Following the probe of the FAS, it was concluded that InstaForex operated as a broker without an official Forex dealer license from the Central Bank of Russia. Thus, the regulator had found that both InstaForex and Yandex had breached the law, particularly the representatives that had sighed the advertising contract, to begin with

Plugging The Leaks

More recently, in December of 2019, the FAS had made a similar announcement, this time in regards to FreshForex, once more distributed by Yandex. Once again, both parties failed to comply with the law due to the fact that FreshForex had no forex dealer license that was issued by the Central Bank of Russia.

For insult to injury, the advertisements themselves failed to include warnings about the risks involved, including that of losing the entire investment. Failing to convey such information on the landing page itself is in direct violation of the laws of an advertisement within Russia.

The FAS’ Moscow Office had issued out statements to both Zaneta Seic and Yandex Europe AG to Cease and Desist from the violations mentioned above. Furthermore, they were mandated to cease the distributions of the ads in question.