Recently the binary options broker IQ Option sent the letter to all its partners in which he informs that, in connection with the new 2016 year changes in the Russian legislation regulating the work in the Forex market, from 01 Jun 2016 IQ Option temporarily suspends advertising their services in Russia and from 01 July 2016 binary options broker prohibits any advertising on the websites, social networks, forums, and other sites of the Internet space.
Important: the binary options broker IQ Option continuing its work in Russia, providing full brokerage services for its clients that is not prohibited by current legislation of the Russian Federation. It is only on termination of the advertising campaign. Moreover, all partners of IQ Option are provided with transitional period from 01 June to 01 July, during which the partners can switch ad traffic to other Internet resources.
However, IQ Option is not ready easy refrain from advertising activities in Russia, so the partners are invited to continue the cooperation, but outside of the Russian Federation outside the Russian-speaking Internet. In a letter from the broker it is said that further partnerships are encouraged to pay attention to countries such as Italy, Germany, UK, Sweden, etc., and outside the European space for UAE and Brazil.
The transition period during June 2016, provided by the broker for affiliates allows you to change the traffic advertising campaign or bring the resources of partners into other languages except Russian. The binary options broker IQ Option focuses on the fact that the income from the clients registered before 01 July will continue to come for the balance of the partner company, however, from 01 July to all traffic from Russian IP addresses the automatic redirect will be applied.
What is happening in the binary options market
The essence of the problem. From January 2016, Russia introduced new rules in the Forex market, which require a license of the Central Bank for brokers with Russian registration. In addition, the broker must meet certain requirements and register with the SRO (self regulating organization). As of may 15, only three of the brokers were able to get a license, while other brokers either continue to work illegally, or temporarily suspended.
The law allows the Forex brokers to operate on the territory of Russia with foreign registration without representation in Russia, but prohibits such companies to advertise their services.
For binary options brokers the situation with the legislation is even more difficult. The law simply has no definition of “binary options trading” so there is no clear understanding of whether the options market operator needs license Forex broker or not.
To answer the question of whether tools of binary options are related to the trading tools of Forex, IQ Option company Europe Ltd. back in February, has prepared a formal request to the Bank of Russia, but in March got a mixed response. According to representatives of the department of securities market, the Russian legislation does not clearly define “binary options”. According to representatives of the department, binary options can also be considered as derivative financial instrument (falling under the Forex legislation), and as rates (falling under the gambling act).
In such uncertain circumstances, the binary options broker IQ Option took the following decision: since the licensing process is costly, requires the certification of employees and the fulfilment of other conditions of the Bank of Russia and the probability of failure to license a large precisely because of the ambiguity of the terminology “binary options”, yet not to submit a package of documents for obtaining a license and in full accordance with the Russian legislation to temporarily suspend the advertising activity on the territory of the Russian Federation, continuing to provide services to customers through its foreign representative office.
Thus, IQ Option continues to work in the legal field. And sent letter to its partners once again shows the honesty and transparency of the broker, both in relation to its clients and partners.
