AMF France v. A (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 6 December 2007 the Commission des sanctions found that the head of a company had sold more than 1.1 million shares of a small listed issuer, through his company, while knowing of a planned capital increase priced far below the market, and that the sales were made short. It imposed a EUR 1.2 million penalty.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€1.2m

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 decided this matter on 6 December 2007, following an investigation opened in February 2006 and a notification of grievances sent on 9 January 2007. The respondent is published as A, who controlled and led company Y; the issuer is called X and made information-kiosk terminals.

The notification alleged that between 4 and 13 October 2005 A sold 1,143,447 shares of X for Y while holding inside information: a capital increase reserved to Y, to be priced more than two and a half times below the then market price. It said the sales produced a gain of EUR 375,161, and that they were made without having the shares to deliver, in breach of settlement rules for shares not eligible for deferred settlement.

The Commission found both breaches established. It found that A placed a first sale order for 690,433 shares on 4 October 2005 that was not delivered until 17 October, and that three later orders were manually re-dated to 18 October. It described the conduct as particularly serious because it was a sale of a large quantity of shares before a significant price fall, and noted that it indirectly benefited A as sole shareholder of Y.

It imposed a financial penalty of EUR 1,200,000 on A, taking into account his stated wealth, and ordered publication.

This record does not show what price fall occurred in market terms beyond the Commission's description, or whether the decision was appealed.

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. 2007-12-06 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.