St. Petersburg, May 15. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation advocates strengthening responsibility for illegal investment advice, including bloggers and telegram channels, and a ban on attracting money from individuals to companies not supervised by the regulator, said the head of the service for protecting consumer rights and ensuring the availability of financial Services, Member of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank Mikhail Mamuta on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum.
“Not to say that massively, but there are complaints. Unfortunately, often people who call themselves investment advisers are not, that is, they are not members of the SRO of the financial market and are not included in the register of investment advisers maintained by the Bank of Russia. People follow some then the advice of telegram channels, often anonymous, generally unknown people, or advice, as it were, of a guru,» he said. As a result, they face financial losses, fraud, and eventually start complaining to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office, Mamuta added.
«We need to strengthen the responsibility for illegal investment advice, because their consequences are close to abuse of the right. There are many real problems here, they require systemic solutions: we are now discussing this with colleagues from other departments,» he said.
According to him, mostly in complaints people say: «I, following the advice of such and such a blogger or such and such a telegram channel, bought something and in the end lost everything, my money went to no one knows where» . Very often, these alleged advisers are pushing to invest in unregulated companies — this is a big problem, which is called «pseudo-trust management», «pseudo-brokerage», Mamuta believes.
“What solutions can there be? We believe that the regulation of the institution of investment advisers needs to be improved: what is an investment recommendation, who can give and what are the consequences. This institution, in my opinion, has not yet fully started working. There have been attempts, but this is only the first step. In many countries, an investment adviser is the one on whose shoulder a person leans throughout the life of the recommendation, and not only when it is issued,» he said.
are not under the supervision of the Central Bank, because there is no other way to win. Plus, constant educational work in the field of investment literacy,» Mamuta added.
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