Yes, they are much more legitimate than Instaforex. Instafirex is nothing compare with them.
They are not making advertisement on Metatrader's forums because they do not care: they are having big money, they are trading stocks, futures and so on on US stock exchange and they are managing pension funds ...
Protected by government?
The company (which is managing the pension funds of the russians) are under governmental protection ...
For example, if I will go to Putin's motherland (St. Petersburg) and I will say that I want to manage the funds about 20B or 200M dollars ... which are coming every month as a pension from 100 million people ... people will call ambulance
And they are managing those funds ...
As I know it was contest/competition to manage the funds: everybody wants but few company is managing ...
Besides, St. Petersburg is very ... how to say ... a lot of policemen ...... I mean: impossible to be big company in St. Petersbug without full licences, registration and so on ... city is very strict one concerning inspection of the business.
I was in this city many times.
Some negativity?
Yes, Russia is Russia: they (govermnets) will protect local russians first (in case this Broco will scam for example).
Example: if Broco decided to scam you (or me) so nothing you can do because Broco is having big money.
It is negative issue with all russian companies: they reputation = reputation of the russian government and it is fully depends on international situation in the world. Positive issue: it does not depends on local situation inside the country.
But, anyway, we received this informatiom using internet, right? So, may be some part of this information is not true ... who knows ...
But Broco is much more bigger broker than Instaforex. Besides, Broco is trading, and Instaforex is collecting the money from traders by the way of deposit