This week the anti-fraud provisions of the Online Safety Act start to become enforceable. This could mean huge fines for social media firms that break the law by carrying fraudulent content. Yet our investigation shows that Facebook is still carrying numerous adverts for investments that might be seen to break the new law, says Andrew Penman

Online safety groups have condemned Facebook for carrying adverts that target savers with high-risk investments.

The criticism comes as the Online Safety Act, with fines of up to £18m for promoting fraudulent content, becomes enforceable.

Besides potentially falling foul of the law, the adverts also appear to breach Facebook’s own safeguarding policy which states that it will only accept promotions for investments that are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

In one extreme example, an advertisement offered daily yields of six per cent from a “revolutionary” cryptocurrency.

When compounded, that equates to an annual interest rate of more than 1,700,000,000 per cent.

The Facebook account is called Biswap Wealth and gives no contact information and could only be reached by Facebook messenger.

When asked for its business address details, the evasive reply was: “Our platform is decentralised”. The account stopped replying when told it was being messaged by a financial journalist.

Biswap Wealth is not regulated by the FCA, and cryptocurrency is largely unregulated, but that did not stop it being able to target savers on Facebook.

The watchdog also does........

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