The Central Bank of Russia (CRB) announced it suspends the forex dealer licenses of Alpari, TeleTrade, TrustForex, and Forex Club due to violations of the Russian law. The move comes a couple of days after the CRB granted a forex broker license to Alfa-Forex, which now remains one of the few forex broker operating legally on the Russian forex market.

The Russian financial mega-regulator has backed its decision with detailed information on each company’s incompliances. The most common among them are failure to comply with CRB’s instructions, providing false accounting data or false information on its website, detected flaws in the risk management system and other violations of the Forex dealer license requirements.

Alpari, TeleTrade, TrustForex, and Forex Club are now given a one-month term to cease all operations and return deposits to their clients.

Despite the formal prohibition for unlicensed brokers to operate in Russia, many companies registered offshore attract Russian clients. Yet, instead of closing regulatory loopholes, the CRB chose to revoke the licenses of the country’s largest forex brokers and impede fair competition on the regulated Russian forex market.