Sceptic

As I said you might as well just set up an e-gaming company and steal off your clients than be bothered with any financial services business if a few policy shortcomings get the board a £120,000 fine. We have a completely disproportionate regulatory regime that does nothing to protect the IOMs actual reputation. It’s just about punishing local businesses for money to show international agencies that people are justifying their jobs.

An absolutely perfect example. Fined £120,000 (reduced from £170,000) for some relatively minor procedural matters. While a load of Chinese fraudsters destroy the IOMs global reputation and the GSC do absolutely bugger all. Who would want to be a local person associated with a local financial services business when they are clearly just targets for naming, shaming and fining as they are viewed as legacy Isle of Man collateral damage to make the regulators look good. Three years ago Capital International were the poster boys for the FSAs alternative banking licensing that nobody else was interested in. They invested heavily despite it taking them almost three years to get a license and them losing a fortune funding it in the meantime. Then they get a public kick in the balls. They might as well have just stolen client money via a fake e-gaming business and walked away with a slap on the wrist by the GSC.

Rest assured if anyone gets fined or struck off, which is unlikely anyway, just like the list on the FSA website, there will be no Chinese names on there. It will be some poor local who will be getting it in the neck and having their career publicly destroyed.

100% they will never understand this. Almost every e-gaming entity brought in here was originally brought in via a CSP connection yet it seems they get a free pass and the CSPs are just treated as dead wood to be culled, fined, shamed or paraded around as examples to international agencies. But it’s the gaming companies like King who are destroying our international reputation and get the walk away with no collateral damage.

E-gaming is clearly “too big to fail” here. They all seem to have some sort of diplomatic immunity for feeding governments aspirations while the legacy IOM finance sector is the only part being named and shamed and pulled apart.

The CSP sector is viewed as legacy IOM revenue. It’s just being beaten up and managed down by the FSA regardless of the limited systematic risk it poses. The future they clearly won’t touch despite the clear issues as it has the potential to jeopardise government income spend. Best get away with nicking millions and ruining the IOMs reputation than not log a few things in a register and get a £20K fine.

You are 100% correct. The policy appears to be to issue more fines and destroy more legacy financial services businesses deemed dispensable as they aren’t key employment or revenue drivers anymore in order to dilute government funding. Whilst doing nothing about widespread e-gaming abuses which are ruining the IOMs reputation.

Sorry I forget that this forum is operated largely by people making a fortune out of this crooked industry. I apologize for trying to point out a two tier system that could be said to exist in the IOM which seems to actively look for soft target locals and financial services businesses to penalize while the other half appears to successively let international fraudsters who are making millions off the hook.

How have they been dealt with? The list of enforcement orders and fines for the FSA is published online https://www.iomfsa.im/enforcement/enforcement-action/ Has anyone linked to King been 1. Fined by the GSC? 2. Prohibited from performing any sort of controlled function by the GSC? 3. Censored or sanctioned or publicly shamed or named in any other way at all by the GSC? Or 4. Has the company itself, it’s board, or its bankers been fined or sanctioned in anyway at all by the GSC? The answer is none of the above. The license has simply been quietly pulled. Nothing to see here move on. Whilst a list of, largely Manx people actually as opposed to Chinese fraudsters, appears on the FSA website for being dealt with as above in situations probably 0.0005% less publicly embarrassing for the IOM, or 0.0005% likely to have caused any structural financial risk to the IOM at all.

While on the other hand a load of deaf dumb and blind pseudo regulators give diplomatic immunity to a massive bunch of mega high earning chancers who are trashing our external reputation because it’s seen as the current public sector funding cash cow.

This is as big as the SIB scandal in 1982 which brought the financial services regulation in you are right. But if you look at the enforcement section of the FSA Website it’s clear that the situation is far, far, different to that of the joke regulator of gaming who sits over companies generating multiple millions a month which does apparently nothing about anything: even reputation damaging people trafficking and fraud. Yet on the other side you see small CSP or yacht management companies being stung for tens of thousands for minor rule book infringements: https://www.iomfsa.im/enforcement/enforcement-action/ The Isle of Man Where You Can, as long as government officers are up to their necks in it!

The general perception is that they are a joke regulator whilst everyone else is being actively targeted for minor infringements for cash.

How many fines have been issued by the GSC in the last 5 years and how many issued by the FSA? There is a huge disparity given the huge turnover of e-gaming businesses compared to financial services. The King situation has destroyed a huge part of our global reputation. Government action so far? Nothing but to say the licenses have been closed. And to be fair many people seem to believe this is all that will ever happen as there is clearly two-tier regulation in place between e-gaming businesses we want and financial services business the IOM is clearly no longer interested in so who cares if f those get trashed.

It seems there are a few compliance folk in FSA regulated businesses now getting increasingly concerned about how the gaming commission seems to be able to walk away from the King situation. Licenses quietly pulled and nobody held accountable for anything whilst the FSA is still issuing huge fines for minor breaches of the codes or regulations for financial services businesses turning over a fraction of what King or associated businesses have been putting through the IOM. The perception after the King situation seems to be that we now have very clear two tier regulation between financial services and e-gaming where for e-gaming anything seems to go and nobody gets pulled for anything. But the financial services businesses are actively being targeted by the FSA for serious fines often for minor procedural matters. Yet they all seem to be ultimately banking with the same banks. Diplomatic immunity because e-gaming is still seen as a key government economic driver when financial services isn’t so who cares who gets fined or shamed in a dying business model? It’s just collateral damage sold to external agencies?

That building is cursed. The Louis Group and now this. Its had a revolving door of quality tenants over the years who have eventually all been sent packing.