LONDON: Britain`s advertising regulator on Wednesday banned advertisements by an Islamic investment platform that `caused serious offence` for featuring images of burning dollar and euro banknotes on posters across London`s transport network.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had taken action over the ads seen on London`s underground railway and buses in late 2024.

Online platform Wahed Invest said its `imagery sought to visually, and metaphorically, highlight the impact inflation has on savings`.

It added in a statement: `Many of our clients elect to not receive interest income on their savings due to religious prohibitions on interest and yet still feel the effects of inflation, thus `burning` their purchasing power.

While ASA `acknowledged Wahed Invest`s view that they had not directly criticised a specific group, and that depictions of burning banknotes were commonly encountered`, the regulator considered the imagery `would have caused serious offence to some viewers`.

ASA reacted after receiving 75 complaints over the posters, which also showed a Muslim preacher and Khabib Nurmagomedov, a Russian former mixed martial artist, pointing upward to the slogan `Join the Money Revolution`.-AFP