Squared Financial Offshore Unit Faces Withdrawal Crisis and Onboarding Shutdown

TradingView's reporting indicates that Squared Financial's Seychelles-based offshore operation has effectively stopped accepting new accounts, with the broker's onboarding system returning a persistent "failed to check email" error across multiple access attempts. This follows roughly six months after the broker surrendered its Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) licence, and coincides with a sharp rise in withdrawal-related complaints filed by clients on review platforms. For copy trading participants and signal providers routing follower capital to CFD venues, the failure mode is mechanical: a regulated entity winds down, clients get pushed to an offshore shelf, and the offshore shelf then goes silent.

Observable Signals from the Onboarding and Withdrawal Surface

What the data shows from the outside: the onboarding flow rejects new individual and corporate applications; Trustpilot has placed a platform warning on the broker's page after detecting and removing a batch of fake reviews; and complaint volume around withdrawal processing spikes in June and July 2026. Trustpilot's flagged page for the Seychelles unit is the most public ledger of client-side friction currently available. The former Managing Director of Squared Financial's Nigerian business, Temitope Ijibadejo, has separately filed a petition with local authorities seeking an investigation into the firm's financial operations and the whereabouts of Nigerian investor funds, adding a second independent confirmation that the withdrawal freeze is not an isolated client-side issue. Ijibadejo's account also places the onset of withdrawal complaints around May 2026, which lines up with the Trustpilot timeline rather than contradicting it.

Regulatory Footprint vs. Operational Status

The Financial Services Authority of Seychelles still lists SQ Sey Ltd as holding an active securities dealer licence, meaning the entity is not formally wound down on paper even though operations have effectively ceased. In Cyprus, the corporate entity remains registered as active with liquidation pending. CySEC previously settled two separate cases against the broker — €35,000 for the Cyprus unit and €50,000 for the Seychelles unit — over the marketing and distribution of CFD products to retail clients. The Seychelles settlement is the data point worth flagging: CySEC penalising a non-EU-domiciled arm is not standard procedure and signals coordinated supervisory action across both domiciles. Combined with founder Philippe Ghanem reportedly telling former staff that the firm intended to wind down by the end of May, the counterparty classification moves from "slow processor" to "structurally impaired." Ghanem, who founded the broker in 2005, has no public references to Squared Financial on his LinkedIn profile — a soft signal that the wind-down is being managed quietly rather than through formal communication channels.

Verification Steps Before Continuing to Route Capital Through the Venue

• Pull the live FSA Seychelles register entry for SQ Sey Ltd directly and confirm the licence status rather than relying on the broker's own disclosures.
• Re-check the Trustpilot page for the Seychelles unit; a maintained platform warning is a leading indicator of review integrity issues and reputational stress.
• Document any pending withdrawal requests with timestamps and counterparty references; in stalled-wind-down cases, dated evidence has outsized value in subsequent recovery proceedings.
• For copy trading accounts that auto-replicate to Squared Financial, disable signal-following on the venue until an independent custody verification or formal settlement status is published.
• Treat any unsolicited "recovery agent" or "claims portal" outreach referencing Squared Financial as unverified by default; secondary-scam volume typically spikes within 30 to 60 days of a primary venue stalling on withdrawals.