Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) has extended the ban on Igor Gutinskiy, the director of Otkritie Broker Ltd, from managing the company for another six months.
This comes after earlier decisions dating back to 2023 that restricted Gutinskiy’s role due to concerns about the company’s ties to Russia’s Otkritie FC Bank. The original two-year management ban was set to start in September 2023, but now it’s been pushed even further.
Otkritie Broker was licensed in Cyprus since 2016 to provide investment services like advisory and brokerage. However, its connection to Otkritie FC Bank, one of Russia’s biggest banks, has raised eyebrows, especially given the war in Ukraine.
CySEC has been concerned about the influence the Russian bank has over the brokerage and took steps to suspend voting rights tied to the company’s shares. This ensures that Russian interests won’t dominate shareholder meetings.
This isn’t the first time Otkritie has faced challenges in Cyprus. The company’s other venture, Otkritie Capital Cyprus, had its license pulled in 2021 when it shut down its retail brokerage services.
At the time, CySEC also announced that Otkritie Capital Cyprus Ltd was officially removed from its lifeboat scheme. Despite this, the company’s clients can still benefit from the Investor Compensation Fund (ICF), which ensures protection and compensation if a financial firm can’t meet its obligations.
Otkritie Capital, offering a wide range of brokerage services like equities, derivatives, and forex, had been around since 2002. It was previously known as Otkritie Securities Limited before rebranding in 2014. The company, headquartered in London, also has offices in Moscow, Limassol, and New York.
About a month prior to this announcement, Otkritie voluntarily surrendered its CySEC license, following in the footsteps of other FX brokers leaving Cyprus. The decision to renounce the license wasn’t due to any regulatory pressure but was made independently by the company.
