AMF France v. A (false rumours, 2009)

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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In October 2009 the AMF's Commission des sanctions found that an individual had posted inaccurate and misleading claims about a listed company's accounts on a website over several weeks in mid-2007, and imposed a financial penalty of 20,000 euros.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

—

Total relief

—

Alleged gain

—

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 Commission des sanctions of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF, France) decided the case on 1 October 2009, after the AMF had opened an inquiry in July 2007 into the information published about the company. The charges were notified to M. A in July 2008.

The notification alleged that on sixteen dates between 23 June and 6 August 2007 he had put out on the internet, without checking them first, inaccurate or misleading statements about the financial communication and accounts of a company whose shares were traded on Euronext Paris. The respondent had earlier complained to the AMF about that company himself.

The Commission found that several of his messages were imprecise, inaccurate and misleading. Examples it cited were the claim that the company's use of a retained-earnings account was an unusual way to hide losses, when the accounting rules allow it, and the claim that a write-off of an intercompany balance was a fraudulent waiver of debt, for which nothing in the file supplied support. It also found no support for his claim that fees had been paid for services never provided. It imposed a financial penalty of 20,000 euros and ordered publication of the decision.

This record does not show whether the shares moved after the messages, whether the respondent traded, or whether the decision was appealed. The company is anonymised in the published decision.

This library tags the matter as false rumours. 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. 2009-10-01 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.