Brazil’s securities regulator has imposed R$3.7 million in fines on forex and CFD brokers FBS Markets Inc. and Mitsui Markets Limited for operating without authorization and offering securities to Brazilian investors without the required registration.
The Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) announced the penalties on November 12, 2026, following a unanimous decision at its November 3 administrative hearing. The ruling covers two violations of Brazil’s Securities Law 6,385/1976 and concludes an investigation into the firms’ solicitation of Brazilian residents.
FBS Markets received R$2 million in penalties, comprising R$500,000 for unauthorized securities intermediation and R$1.5 million for public securities offerings without registration or an exemption. Mitsui Markets was fined R$1.7 million, consisting of R$425,000 and R$1.275 million for the same respective violations.
Both companies can appeal to Brazil’s National Financial System Appeals Council, with suspensive effect. The fines therefore represent a formal enforcement decision, although their collection may be delayed if appeals are submitted.
FBS Faced Brazilian Regulatory Warnings Since 2017
The penalties follow a regulatory dispute extending back nearly a decade, rather than a newly discovered breach.
According to the CVM’s administrative case file, investigations involving FBS began in September 2016 after reports that the company was offering forex trading services to Brazilian residents without local authorization.
On January 5, 2017, the regulator issued Declaratory Act 15,440 against FBS Markets Inc. and Trader Forex Ltda., ordering the suspension of unauthorized investment solicitation. The order included a potential daily penalty of R$1,000 for noncompliance.
The earlier file is older than the new fines, by quite a lot.
A fresh complaint submitted by a financial institution operating in Brazil on July 23, 2024, prompted another investigation into FBS’s activities. The complainant alleged that the brokerage continued expanding its operations in Brazil, particularly through contracts for difference linked to foreign exchange markets.
Regulators subsequently identified Mitsui Markets Limited as another company operating through a related trading website.
On February 20, 2025, the CVM issued Declaratory Act 23,105, formally identifying both FBS Markets and Mitsui Markets as unauthorized to intermediate securities or solicit investment funds from Brazilian residents.
The February warning and November monetary sanctions are seperate regulatory actions. The earlier notice ordered the companies to stop unauthorized solicitation, while the latest ruling establishes administrative liability and imposes financial penalties.
Portuguese Websites, Pix Payments and 1:3000 Leverage
The investigation identified several indicators that the companies were deliberately targeting Brazilian investors rather than simply operating international trading websites accessible from Brazil.
During inspections conducted in September 2024, the CVM examined two websites: fbs.com/pt, associated with FBS Markets, and ptfbs.com, associated with Mitsui Markets.
The websites presented themselves as online forex brokerages and advertised trading conditions including leverage of up to 1:3000, minimum deposits of $5, spreads starting at 0.7 pip and order execution times of 0.01 seconds. These were historical promotional claims recorded by investigators, not independently established trading-performance measurements.
A website was only part of it, not all of it.
The regulator also identified Portuguese-language customer support, local payment facilities including Brazil’s Pix instant-payment system, and social media marketing through Instagram, YouTube and Facebook.
Investigators documented sponsored links, Google advertisements aimed at Brazilian audiences and substantial traffic originating from Brazil. FBS’s commerical marketing was specifically cited as additional evidence that the company sought local customers.
The case file also records complaints submitted by Brazilian customers through Reclame Aqui, including allegations of blocked balances and unpaid withdrawal requests. Those complaints supported the regulator’s assessment that Brazilian residents were interacting with the platforms, but they were not independently adjudicated findings of withdrawal misconduct.
Mitsui’s case was a little different on that point.
The regulator found less directly attributable advertising activity involving Mitsui. Nevertheless, its website offered substantially similar Portuguese-language trading services, account registration, deposits and withdrawals. A customer agreement examined by the CVM also identified Mitsui as the contracting counterparty for forex and CFD transactions.
Igor Muniz, the CVM director responsible for the case, concluded that both businesses provided the infrastructure necessary for securities transactions with Brazilian residents without joining the country’s authorized securities distribution system.
The ruling also addressed the companies’ foreign regulatory status. FBS was incorporated in Belize, while Mitsui was incorporated in Vanuatu. Their websites referred to regulatory arrangements in those jurisdictions, but the CVM found that foreign registration or authorization did not substitute for permission to conduct regulated securities activities in Brazil.
The distinction is consistent with the different protections and permissions examined in DaveFinances’ analysis of forex broker licenses and offshore regulation.
Why FBS Received a Larger Fine Than Mitsui
Although the companies were found responsible for identical categories of violations, the CVM imposed a higher total penalty on FBS.
The numbers look uneven, and the ruling explains why.
Muniz initially established the same base penalties for both firms: R$500,000 for unauthorized intermediation and R$1.5 million for unregistered public offerings.
FBS received a 15% aggravating adjustment because the regulator determined that its unauthorized activities had continued for more than eight years after the initial enforcement warning. An accompanying 15% reduction for its absence of previous administrative penalties offset that adjustment, leaving its original R$2 million base penalty unchanged.
Mitsui received the 15% reduction without the equivalent aggravating adjustment. The CVM explained that Mitsui had first been identified in its February 2025 warning, leaving a substantially shorter period of documented activity following regulatory notification.
That calculation reduced Mitsui’s penalties to R$425,000 for unauthorized intermediation and R$1.275 million for unregistered offerings.
The regulator also considered the economic scale of the activity when setting the penalties. Its ruling cited an FBS website statement indicating approximately $1.5 million in monthly commission payments, but explicitly treated that figure as an indication of operational scale rather than verified funds collected from Brazilian investors.
Both companies failed to submit defenses during the administrative proceedings despite formal notification attempts and subsequent public notices. The ruling specifically acknowledged that failure to appear did not constitute an admission of wrongdoing, requiring the regulator to establish the violations through the available evidence.
Brazil’s Ruling Tests Offshore Broker Market Access
The enforcement decision addresses a recurring issue in cross-border forex and CFD regulation: whether overseas brokers can solicit local customers without obtaining authorization in the country where those investors reside.
Brazil’s legal framework treats relevant derivatives, including CFDs and non-deliverable forex contracts, as securities subject to the CVM’s jurisdiction. The regulator found that the firms were not merely permitting access to overseas services but were actively facilitating investment by Brazilian residents.
For the public-offering violation, the ruling also clarified that the regulator did not need to establish that investors had actually purchased the securities. The unauthorized public offer itself was sufficient to establish the relevant infringement.
Other emerging markets are examining comparable cross-border questions. In September 2026, Nigeria’s securities regulator proposed rules requiring offshore forex and CFD brokers to obtain local authorization when targeting Nigerian residents, potentially capturing firms operating without a physical office in the country.
Brazil’s decision also documents promotional leverage reaching 1:3000, substantially exceeding the retail CFD limits applied in jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and Australia. DaveFinances has previously examined the costs, leverage exposure and losses associated with retail CFD trading, although the Brazilian penalties concern authorization and public-offering violations rather than customers’ trading outcomes.
The CVM’s decision does not quantify how much money the companies collected from Brazilian customers, how many accounts were affected or whether any investors suffered losses directly attributable to the unauthorized activities.
The regulator directed that the judgment be communicated to Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Central Bank of Brazil and relevant regulatory authorities in Belize and Vanuatu.
Those referrals do not establish that additional sanctions have been imposed by the receiving authorities. They do, though, extend the regulatory visibility of the case beyond Brazil.
For FBS Markets, the decision is particularly notable because the regulator’s first warning dates to 2017, with further evidence of Brazilian-facing operations documented in 2024 and 2025. The noticable duration of the enforcement history was explicitly incorporated into the penalty calculation.
The outstanding procedural issue is whether either company appeals. Such appeals would suspend the effects of the monetary penalties while the administrative review proceeds. Until then, the November 12 announcement stands as the CVM’s latest published enforcement decision against the two brokerage entities.
Johan Shamshad is Editor-in-Chief at Dave Finances, covering financial markets, digital assets, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, payments and regulation. Since 2023, he has also worked as an editor at Gulf News, the UAE English-language newspaper published by Al Nisr Publishing LLC. His work focuses on market-moving developments, company disclosures, regulatory changes and trading infrastructure, with an emphasis on primary-source verification and practical context for traders and investors.