AMF France v. A, B and C (insider trading, 2007)

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 4 October 2007 the Commission des sanctions found that the chief executive of a listed flight-simulator maker, his wife and a fellow director had sold shares while holding undisclosed information about the company's financial difficulties. It fined them EUR 50,000, EUR 3,000 and EUR 15,000, the chief executive also being sanctioned for his disclosure failings.

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

€68k

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 decided this matter on 4 October 2007, after an investigation opened by the AMF's secretary general in September 2004 and notifications of grievances sent on 20 June 2006. The respondents are published only as A, B and C. The decision does not name the company, which it calls X: a maker of computer simulators for pilot training whose shares were listed in Paris and which entered insolvency proceedings in April 2005.

The notifications alleged that A, the chief executive, had given the market inaccurate or misleading financial information over 2002 to 2004, and that A, his wife B (a director) and C (also a director) had traded on inside information about the company's financial position. The financial-information allegations were that provisional and final accounts were published through different channels without explaining the gaps, that the risk of missing announced targets was not disclosed, and that cash-flow strains linked to a large naval contract were not disclosed.

The Commission found the insider-dealing breach established against all three. A sold all 130,973 of his shares between 3 October and 3 December 2003 for about EUR 564,000; B sold all 4,860 of hers in December 2003; C sold 56,342 shares between October 2003 and January 2004 for about EUR 246,000. The Commission held that holding the information and then selling before it became public was enough, and that the sellers had not shown an overriding reason for the sales. It also upheld a disclosure breach against A.

It imposed financial penalties of EUR 50,000 on A, EUR 3,000 on B and EUR 15,000 on C (EUR 68,000 in total) and ordered the decision published.

This record does not show whether the decision was later appealed, what happened to the company's shareholders after the insolvency, or the real names of the respondents.

This library tags the matter as insider trading. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2007-10-04 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.