CONSOB Suspends Activity Of Two Fraudulent Crypto Investment Schemes

By Rishma Banerjee

The Italian Companies and Exchange Commission or Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB) is the Italian version of USA’s financial guard dog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which represents a governmental authority that regulates the Italian securities market. As per the official statement and the reports released on their website on Monday, December 17th, they have recently suspended the activity of two projects which were apparently fraudulent crypto investment schemes. they have been charged with a 90-day suspension. The two firms that were suspended were  Bitsurge Token and Green Energy Certificates were both alleged with the scam projects from the non-European Union-based company Avalon Life. Their punishment has been outlined into two official resolutions.

The Bitsurge scheme was promoted both on their website called bitsurge.io and on their facebook  page which was termed as the “Bitsurge Token.” As a part of the Scheme, the Company was to offer investors with “token contracts”.  The CONSOB report also says that the customers reportedly did not possess any autonomy in the management of their tokens.

The  Green Earth Certificates, which was the second scheme was reportedly promoted through the Facebook page “Progetto Crypto Green Earth” and offered “Green Earth Certificates” in an effort to protect rainforests from deforestation by purchasing forest areas via blockchain. The alleged scam intended to provide a six percent reward on the sum of crypto investments in forest areas such as Costa Rica, which have large areas of rainforests.

CONSOB had also, in association with Maltas’s Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issued a joint warning an about an unlicensed cryptocurrency exchange named OriginalCrypto. By mid-November, the CONSOB had taken dozen three crypto-related firms for the alleged offering of unapproved investment services.

In regard to the issue of crypto-related advertising on Facebook, the social media giant had previously banned crypto and ICO ads in January 2018, claiming that it wanted to prohibit “misleading or deceptive promotional practices” associated with crypto. However, their social media entity was updated their policy to allow cryptocurrencies ads again in late June 2018, still maintaining their ban on promoting initial coin offerings (ICO).

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.

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