BaFin has also been made aware that (former) customers of the platform investkingdom.co were and/or are being referred to kingdom-investments.io. In this context, BaFin has also become aware of the website kims-ltd.co. Visitors to this site are forwarded from there to the website kims-ltd.co.uk, which is operated by the company Kingdom Investments Management Limited. This company is registered with the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, there are no indications of any actual cooperation between Kingdom Investments Management Limited and the operators of the platform kingdom-investments.io or of the website kims-ltd.co; rather, it is likely that Kingdom Investments Management Limited has become the target of identity theft. The FCA has issued a warning on its website stating that a “clone firm” of Kingdom Investments Management Limited is operating on the market. In this warning, the FCA explicitly names the websites investkingdom.net and investkingdom.co.

The information provided on the website kingdom-investments.io and the information and documents available to BaFin give reasonable grounds to suspect that the platform is being used to conduct banking business and/or provide financial services in Germany without the required authorisation.

Companies that conduct banking business or provide financial services in Germany require authorisation under the KWG. However, some companies operate without the necessary authorisation. Information on whether a particular company has been granted authorisation by BaFin can be found in BaFin’s database of companies.

BaFin, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt – BKA) and the German state criminal police offices (Landeskriminalämter) recommend that consumers seeking to invest money online should exercise the utmost caution and do the necessary research beforehand in order to identify fraud attempts at an early stage.