Russian antimonopoly authorities order Yandex to halt FreshForex ads

The Moscow office of the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has taken yet another action against non-compliant advertisement by Forex firms. Today, the authorities announce that they have found advertisement of FreshForex, distributed via Yandex, to be non-compliant with the law.

The body has found that FreshForex has no Forex dealer license issued by the Central Bank of Russia. Hence, the advertisement of the FX services of FreshForex are in breach of the law on advertising.

In addition, the advertisement included no warning about the high risks of losing the entire investment. The lack of such a disclaimer in the advertisement as well as its lack on the landing page to which it redirected is also in violation of the law on advertisement.

The Moscow office of FAS instructed Yandex Europe AG and Zaneta Seic to cease and desist from the above-mentioned violations and to stop the distribution of the ads in question.

Let’s recall that, in October 2019, FAS said it commenced a check into the ads of online trading firm FreshForex. The check follows a signal by the Association of Forex Dealers, a Russian Forex industry self-regulatory body. The concerns of the authorities were sparked by FreshForex ads distributed via Yandex.Direct. FAS reminded the public that advertising of services of entities that lack the necessary licenses is not allowed.

Also in October, FAS issued a statement regarding an advertising message by InstaForex which stated “InstaForex- official website – broker licensed by the Central Bank”. The probe has identified that InstaForex is operating without a Forex dealer license from the Central Bank of Russia. Hence, the regulator determined that the law was breached by Yandex and by Instaforex’s representative who signed the advertising contract with Yandex. FAS issued instructions to both respondents to put an end to the violations and fix the breaches.