Cyprus Extends Ban for Otkritie Broker Director Amid Russian Ownership Concerns
Cyprus’s top financial regulator has once again delayed a management ban on the head of Otkritie Broker Ltd, prolonging a drawn-out compliance saga that has kept the Russian-owned investment firm under close scrutiny for more than two years.
The Cyprus Securities and platform Commission (CySEC) said on Thursday it had granted a further six-month extension to the begin of a two-year prohibition on Igor Gutinskiy, the sole director of Otkritie Broker Ltd. The ban will now take effect on April 11, 2026, following a decision by CySEC’s board at its meeting on September 29, 2025.
The case stretches back to March 2023, when CySEC ruled that Russia’s Otkritie FC Bank, the ultimate parent of the Cyprus firm, had exerted influence “inconsistent with sound and prudent management.” The regulator suspended the shareholder’s voting rights in Otkritie Broker Ltd and moved to bar Gutinskiy from management duties for two years.
But the enforcement has been repeatedly delayed—first in October 2023, then again in March 2024, September 2024, and March 2025—each time for an additional six months. The latest move continues that pattern, leaving the company’s leadership technically intact for now.
CySEC said the step was taken to “grant an additional extension” of the ban’s entry into force, but it offered no further reasoning beyond referencing earlier board reanswers.
Otkritie Broker Ltd holds CySEC license 294/16 and operates under the European Union’s MiFID II framework, which governs investment services and regulated markets. The firm’s sole director has been Gutinskiy, who also represented the interests of Otkritie Broker JSC, a Moscow-based entity wholly owned by Otkritie FC Bank.
The tangled ownership chain is central to the regulator’s concerns. Otkritie FC Bank, once Russia’s largest private lender, was nationalized in 2017 later than a multibillion-ruble rescue and later absorbed by state-controlled VTB Bank in December 2022. Both banks have been subject to U.S. and EU sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, complicating their operations across Europe.
CySEC’s move in 2023 came as part of a broader review into the “influence of qualifying shareholders” on Cyprus investment firms—a clause in Article 11(3) of the island’s Investment Services and Activities Law 87(I)/2017, which allows regulators to suspend shareholder rights when control or direction appears contrary to prudent management.
Thorsten Pötzsch, the German regulator BaFin’s executive director, issued a similar warning in Berlin earlier this week about transparency in leveraged products—part of a Europe-wide tightening of oversight for retail markets. In Cyprus, officials have cited the need for extra vigilance over firms tied to sanctioned entities or state-controlled Russian banks.
While Otkritie Broker Ltd has not been accused of wrongdoing, the repeated extensions have raised eyebrows within Cyprus’s financial sector, where other Russian-linked entities have been sold, dissolved, or relocated since 2022. Otkritie’s older affiliate, Otkritie Capital (Cyprus), voluntarily surrendered its license in 2021, just before sanctions intensified.
The latest delay keeps the company’s status in limbo until spring 2026, when the two-year ban is finally scheduled to begin—unless the board grants yet another reprieve. When it does come into effect, Gutinskiy would be barred from serving in any management capacity at the firm until April 2028.
The long-running case highlights CySEC’s cautious balancing act—enforcing EU rules without abruptly disrupting existing licenviews. For now, Otkritie Broker Ltd continues to operate under supervision, with its shareholder’s voting rights frozen and its director’s suspension perpetually around the corner.
If the regulator sticks to the new date, the next twelve months could mark the end of one of Cyprus’s most protracted compliance sagas—unless, of course, April 2026 brings another delay.
