The Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, or CSSF, stands as Luxembourg’s financial market regulator. The CSSF has come out with an official warning regarding a firm going under the name of Brokerhouse OTC or OTC Markets. According to the warning, this firm claims to be authorized by the CSSF, while the truth is that it isn’t licensed to do business within the Luxembourg jurisdiction.

Calling Malicious Actors Out

The public advisory was published on the 16th of November, 2020. In this advisory, the CSSF makes it clear to warn users against the use of this online trading business. The business in questions leverages the www.otc-markets.eu web domain, claiming to be fully authorized by way of the CSSF.

With this announcement, the CSSF further revealed that OTC markets have been publishing fake data over its headquarters, as well.  The business claims it operates at 121 Avenue de la Faïencerie, L-1511 Luxembourg, though that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Furthermore, the regulator stressed the fact that OTC markets had never been granted the authorizations needed to do financial or banking services from the CSSF. As such, the company isn’t regulated by it, and puts investors at risk that take part in its services.

A Reputation To Uphold

Sadly, this was far from the first nor the last case where the CSSF has encountered websites that claim to have authorization from the Luxembourg regulator while the contrary is true. It’s a simple matter of how the local authorities of Luxembourg are known, and are rather proud of being known as a banking safe haven.

What this means is any malicious operation will be more likely to claim that the CSSF regulates them, as they are attractive to investors, overall.

The counterbalance regarding this, however, is that the CSSF takes great pains to ensure that its reputation is safe. As such, it quickly tracks down any company illegally declaring itself as being regulated by the country.

Previous Run Ins

It was just earlier this year when the CSSF had to warn the public about a BitPay clone that was trying to gain profit by impersonating the popular crypto exchange.

BitPay, the legitimate one, stands as a BCH, BTC, and ETH payment processor, specializing in allowing merchant accounts to accept payments by way of crypto.

While Luxembourg has no dedicated regulations as a country, it’s adopted the European restrictions regarding similar products. This runs in tandem with the Fifth Money Laundering Directive, or AMD 5,  which was implemented in a bid to provide a broad definition for crypto assets.