Hi Friends, Here are my views:
a. I have seen lot of members 1. Showing concern how if it is not legal RBI has allowed Alpari to function 2. also few members taking comfort in the fact that since Alpari is allowed to set up business in India, there should be no issues and Fx trading is legal.
I want to address both these two issues as follows:
First and foremost Alpari functioning here in India has nothing to do with RBI either allowing / disallowing Fx trading for resident Indians.
Like so many Multi national company's have set up outsourced call center facility here in India to due to benefits of lower / cheap English speaking manpower availability here.
Now this is how Alpari would defend ( i am playing devil's advocate for Alpari) their case stating Alpari India is basically set up to service their overall international customers, if any Indian calls up and shows interest in their services it is not their mistake, this is exactly the reason why ideally they don't have anything to with any Indian customers on any Alpari Indian letter head, what they would do is they divert all the potential customers to open the account with Alpari UK, now it becomes the responsibility of that person to handle the issues related with the same and Alpari (I) would be present no where in the picture.
Hope concerned members are getting an idea. hence for heaven sake don't take comfort in the fact that OK Indian Govt / RBI has allowed Alpari to operate in India and hence Fx trading is Legal, there is nothing more farther from the fact.
Also for your information in addition to having their facility to service international customers and act more like a back office operation they have also ventured out and taken permission /license from Govt /RBI to start trading in Indian currency products like; INR/USD, INR/EUR which are any which ways already allowed by RBI for resident Indians.
As a summation the only point I am trying to make here many members have posted /shared very valuable information as well as links but all of us are still in dark if answer is yes/no at a time when all of us are searching for this answer, I thought let me at least clear the air related to Alpari I operations and few members making analogy/correlation with that of Fx trading legality, that is the only limited point i wanted to address,
Cheers!!