The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA has launched enforcement proceedings against envion AG. After raising over $100 million from investors, envion AG’s ICO became the second major ICO that has sparked controversy in Switzerland.

FINMA stated that envion AG may have violated financial market law in relation to Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Therefore, FINMA launched enforcement proceedings against envion AG. The proceedings focus in particular on possible breaches of banking law, as a result of the potentially unauthorized acceptance of public deposits in connection with the ICO.

Investigations executed by FINMA state that, in terms of the ICO, envion AG received funds amounting to approximately one hundred million francs from more than 30,000 investors in return for issuing EVN tokens in a bond-like form. FINMA will make no further comment on the process until the investigation is complete.

In last year September the number of ICOs, that were tabled for investigation on whether certain regulatory provisions have been breached, doubled and continues to increase. FINMA consistently fights those ICO business models that break or circumvent supervisory law as well as drawn attention of the public to the risks that ICOs may pose for investors.

Also, the regulator once again confirmed that it is committed to ensure that innovators can launch their ICO projects lawfully. As you may know FINMA has already published guidelines for ICO projects in February 2018.

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