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F.W International (Finance Wise International) establishes unsolicited contact with German customers of the trading platform hoxglobal.com, operated by Trading Global (Hoxton), LTD, and claims to carry on business for the company via its own platform, financewiseint.com. The two websites are almost identical. In accordance with section 37 (4) of the German Banking Act (Kreditwesengesetz – KWG), BaFin would like to make clear that F.W International (Finance Wise International) does not have authorisation under the KWG to conduct banking business or provide financial services. The company is not supervised by BaFin. The provider claims to have branches in Germany (Berlin), Cyprus, Australia and the United Kingdom. It also claims to be registered with the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission; however, this registration refers to a company called IC Global Markets Ltd. and the registration cannot be verified.
The information provided on the financewiseint.com website and the information and documents available to BaFin give reasonable grounds to suspect that the website is being used to conduct banking business and/or provide financial services in Germany without the required authorisation.
Companies that conduct banking business or provide financial services in Germany require authorisation under the KWG. However, some companies operate without the necessary authorisation. Information on whether a particular company has been granted authorisation by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.
BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand to avoid becoming the victim of fraud.
