Zulutrade fined by CFTC 

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced the filing and simultaneous settlement of charges against Zulutrade, Inc., a CFTC-registered Introducing Broker located in Piraeus, Greece, for failure to diligently supervise activities relating to its business as a CFTC registrant. Specifically, the CFTC’s Order found that for at least a three-year period from October 2010 to October 2013, Zulutrade failed to follow its procedures for screening for accountholders from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) targeted countries. The Order requires Zulutrade to pay a $150,000 civil monetary penalty and disgorge $80,000 in commissions and fees it earned from accounts that were related to the supervisory failure.

OFAC administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted foreign countries based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals. U.S. persons and entities are generally prohibited from doing business with persons and entities from OFAC targeted countries. During the relevant period, Zulutrade had a procedure to screen for potential accountholders from OFAC targeted countries. That procedure provided that Zulutrade could delegate implementation of OFAC screening to third party service providers or agents provided Zulutrade had a written agreement with the service provider outlining the third party’s responsibilities, and that Zulutrade would actively monitor the delegation to assure that the procedures are being conducted in an effective manner.

Zulutrade opened approximately 400 accounts for accountholders from OFAC targeted countries (primarily Iran, Sudan, and Syria). All of the accounts opened for accountholders from targeted countries were from service providers with which Zulutrade did not have written agreements.

 

Source: cftc

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