…however most importantly, it seems as though not all clients of the binary options broker have received their money back.
Following up our earlier exclusive story about binary options broker iOption closed down – the real story from November… CySEC has finally, two months after the fact, made an announcement that the CIF license issued to iOption’s parent company Scorpid Trading Ltd is no more. However strangely, CySEC claims to not have cancelled the license; rather they state that Scorpid ‘renounced its authorization’.
What exactly has to happen for CySEC to itself revoke a license???
The statement further goes on to state that the ‘Company informed the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission that has settled all its obligations arising from the investment services provided via the domains www.ioptoneu.com and www.easyinvest.eu or/and activities that are terminated.’ (Note that CySEC misspelled the first url by leaving out an ‘i’. No big deal). No mention of the ‘main’ website www.ioption.com was made.
However we’ve been informed by several former clients of iOption that they still have been unable to get their money back, and that they fear they may never see their money again. (To be fair, we’ve been told by other ex iOption clients that they were indeed repaid). And now today, CySEC has come out with a clarification press release, pointing out that — contrary to yesterday’s original announcement — iOption indeed ‘has not settled its obligations… but… the Company informed the Commission, it undertakes all necessary actions to this objective.’
As for the iOption website? Well, it still seems to be up, reincarnated as a BVI company called iOption Global Group 2012 Ltd. It doesn’t seem like they’re taking any new clients at the ‘new’ iOption, but rather just keeping the website alive — there are no more contact phone numbers, market data and the economic calendar are down… Perhaps the website is being kept ‘alive’ in the hopes of selling the brand and the url.
In any event, CySEC saw fit to put out a third announcement in the past two days regarding the ‘surviving’ iOption website, stating in its boiler plate language that the ‘new’ iOption (and its ‘new’ parent iOption Global Group 2012 Ltd) has indeed never been licensed by CySEC.
So, basically, instead of making one complete, well thought out announcement about what really happened at iOption CySEC has succeeded in confusing us and everyone else out there — without it seems doing much to make sure clients of the defunct binary options broker get their money back, other than getting a statement from the company ‘it undertakes all necessary actions to this objective.’ For the real iOption story, traders had to come to LeapRate.
We’ll keep our audience updated as this story progresses.
To see the CySEC statement re Scorpid’s CIF license click here.
For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.