AMF France v. A (false information, 2006)

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.

Report an error in this record (amf-fr-san-2007-25-false-rumors-2006) by email

On 19 December 2006 the AMF Commission des sanctions found that A, chief executive of listed company X, had a duty to publicly correct specific and false claims of completed and imminent hotel sales that a journalist published on 20 May 2003 on his information, and instead had holding companies he owned sell shares after the price jumped. It fined him EUR 150,000 and rejected the insider-dealing charge.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

—

Disgorgement

—

Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

Penalty as published

€150k

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 second section of the Commission des sanctions of the AMF decided the matter on 19 December 2006. A grievance notice had been sent to A on 16 February 2006, company X being a listed hotel owner.

A was charged with inaccurate and misleading information, with failing to correct it, and with using inside information.

The Commission found that on 20 May 2003 an audiotel service, repeated in the 22 May 2003 issue of the newsletter La Bourse, stated that the sale of a Paris townhouse was done and raised cash from EUR 4 million to EUR 8.2 million, and that talks on the group's other hotels were about to yield EUR 32 million, with a strong buy recommendation to EUR 40 to 45, about double the price. Both statements were manifestly misleading: the company was buying that townhouse, and no hotel sale was close. The journalist said he relied entirely on A, who admitted raising the topics. The Commission did not hold A responsible for the journalist's own publication, but held that he had an overriding duty to publish a wide correction and deliberately did not, correcting being left to a deputy on a web forum. His holding companies sold X shares after the jump, with gross gains of EUR 157,988 and EUR 59,059.

It rejected the insider-dealing charge, given the deputy's forum statements and A's own bond purchases, and imposed EUR 150,000 for the breach of the duty to correct, with publication.

The record does not show who originally supplied each claim beyond the journalist's and A's accounts, 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 false rumours (nearest tag; the Commission sanctioned a failure to correct misleading information, not its origination). 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2006-12-19 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.