Italy's financial markets authority, CONSOB, issued an administrative sanction against Skyway Capital on September 21, 2022, banning its operations for securities fraud. The company also received a €70,000 fine for offering financial products to Italian residents without the legally required prospectus. This decision followed a multi-year investigation into Skyway Capital's activities.
CONSOB's September 21 bulletin detailed how the website associated with Sky Way Capital Inc. invited individuals to invest. It promised visitors a chance to "become co-owner of the largest transport company of the 21st century." Once registered, investors could subscribe to standardized shares in group companies. This process, the company claimed, granted "co-ownership of the company" along with property rights, including the right to "receive dividends based on the number of company shares purchased."
The regulator found Sky Way Capital Inc. had carried out an "offering of financial products to savers resident in Italy without the prior publication of the prospectus, in violation of art. 94 of the TUF." This constituted securities fraud under Italian law.
CONSOB's investigation into Skyway Capital began in 2018. Following preliminary inquiries, the authority requested more information and a response from Skyway Capital. The company ignored this initial request.
On February 15, 2019, CONSOB notified Skyway Capital of a ten-day suspension for its website in Italy due to ongoing legal violations. Checks on February 19 and 20, 2019, showed Skyway Capital's website continued to commit securities fraud despite the suspension.
CONSOB then ruled Skyway Capital's business operations in Italy illegal on February 27, 2019. The authority had attempted to contact the company twice in February 2019. As with its first outreach, Skyway Capital failed to respond on either occasion.
On January 22, CONSOB revisited Skyway Capital's website and confirmed the company was still engaged in securities fraud. The authority proposed a €70,000 administrative fine against Skyway Capital on March 15. A review process followed, and the proposal received approval on June 10, 2021. CONSOB authorized the publication of these sanctions against Skyway Capital on September 21, 2022.
Skyway Capital has operated as a long-running Russian Ponzi scheme, primarily associated with Anatoly Yunitsky, also known as Anatoly Unitsky. Early reviews of Skyway Capital in 2011 described a scheme offering 22% daily returns, then headed by Evgeny Kudryashov.
Yunitsky has since attempted to distance himself from the original scheme and its regulatory scrutiny. He created Unitsky String Technologies in late 2021. Skyway Capital itself has been rebranded as "Sky World Community."
Lithuania banned Skyway Capital for fraud earlier in 2022. At that time, web traffic analysis showed Italy as the second largest source of visitors to Unitsky String Technologies' website. The recruitment of Skyway Capital investors in Italy has since collapsed. SimilarWeb currently tracks the top sources of Unitsky String Technologies' website traffic as Russia (21%), Turkey (16%), Uzbekistan (15%), Kazakhstan (12%), and the Philippines (11%).