AMF France v. A (price manipulation, 2005)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 5, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the French decision; an independent second reading of 60 of the AMF records agreed on every field for 54 and on the core fields for 59. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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On 16 June 2005 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that investor A had placed 555 orders in a thinly traded share between 1 April and 18 June 2003, cancelling 421 of them, and that 53 orders froze trading, to fend off a feared low-price withdrawal offer by the parent group. It fined him EUR 20,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€20k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in EUR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The first section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 16 June 2005 after a hearing that day. A COB inquiry followed a jump in the share price of company X, a prepaid phone card distributor, from EUR 15.41 to EUR 26.30 between 16 and 22 May 2003. A grievance of price manipulation was notified to A on 11 January 2005.

The notice alleged that A sent many orders that did not reflect his real intentions, in order to steer the price upward, hindering free price formation and misleading other investors.

A admitted he had worked to stop the price falling, to test the market, to detect hidden buy orders by X's parent group and to deter a low-priced withdrawal offer. The Commission found that over 47 sessions he placed 555 orders (58 executed in whole or part) and cancelled 421, 16 after partial execution; that 53 orders froze quotation; that his orders were large, far from market prices or at any price; and that he used five accounts in his own, his daughters', a family company's and another company's names, which made his activity look broader. This gave a fictitious appearance of interest in an illiquid share and breached the manipulation rules.

It took into account the share's low liquidity, the delay of the brokers in reacting, and that A stopped on 18 June 2003 when one of them asked, and fined him EUR 20,000.

The record does not show whether A profited, and the decision does not say whether it was later reformed or annulled on appeal. The AMF anonymised the respondent as A.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the decision.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Price manipulation — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2005-06-16 Commission des sanctions decision

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• AMF decision page
• Decision (PDF, French)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 5, 2026. submit a correction.