Spanish Securities Watchdog Calls for Search Engines, Social Network Operators to Stop Promoting Unregistered Investment Platforms

The CNMV, the Spanish securities regulator, has called for large search engines and social networks to stop offering advertising services for platforms that are not registered to offer investment or financial services. The regulator has also stated that it will take matters into its own hands by promoting regulation on the issue if these companies fail to address it.

Spanish Regulator Addresses Unregistered Platform Advertising Issue

Spanish securities regulator CNMV is very worried about the space that big internet companies are giving unregistered investment platforms to advertise their services. The president of the organization, Rodrigo Buenaventura, referred to this issue in a speech given at an event called “Supervisor, Cryptoactives, and Advertising: good practice in the sector,” where he explained the stance of the CNMV on this problem

Buenaventura stated:

In my opinion, it is unjustifiable that companies that broadcast paid advertising on social networks or search engines profit by admitting advertisements from pirate entities, which are publicly warned as unregistered platforms.

Furthermore, Buenaventura declared these companies are putting their own customers in jeopardy by advertising such services to them, causing them to fall into various scams.

Most of the fraud cases that are in Spanish tribunals, causing millions of dollars in damages, have been identified by the organization as non-authorized platforms before. Buenaventura thinks that these problems could have been avoided if platforms used the lists that the CNMV and other European regulators issue frequently to bar such unregistered platforms from using advertising services.

In this sense, he explained:

We are asking them to commit themselves, through self-regulation, that their networks or pages do not serve as a vehicle for spreading deception and possible crimes in exchange for increasing their income.

Regulation Could Be Next

The Spanish regulator will give some time for these companies to integrate the aforementioned changes to protect their users from these services. However, it also announced that if its demands are not resolved, it would take matters into its own hands by proposing regulations to force companies to comply with these requirements.

According to El Mundo, sources of the CNMV stated that it would be a matter of weeks for it to propose this regulation. The same sources state these companies argue that some issues — technical difficulties, permission from parent companies, and time to analyze and implement measures — have prevented them from complying with the requirements.

The CNMV has already issued a regulation that forces crypto-related advertising campaigns targeting more than 100K users to notify the regulator of the reach of such campaigns in advance.