AMF France v. A, B, C, D, X, Y (insider trading, 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 November 2009 the AMF's Commission des sanctions fined one individual 60,000 euros for short-selling a listed company's shares in February 2006 on inside information about a sharp fall in its quarterly sales, and cleared the other three individuals and two firms.

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

€60k

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 12 November 2009. The respondents were four individuals and two institutions, published under letters.

The notifications alleged that two banking firms and two equity salespeople had used inside information about a very large fall in a listed company's third-quarter 2005/2006 sales when short-selling its shares on 7 to 9 February 2006: about 2.3 million shares in one case and 1.2 million in the other. A third individual was accused of passing the information to a colleague, and a fourth, D, of using it.

The Commission upheld the charge only against D. It found that an analyst had steered D, who actually managed an account held in his father's name, towards a figure for quarterly sales close to the real one, which was more than 39 million euros below D's own estimate. On 7 February 2006, within minutes of speaking to the analyst, D placed a short sale worth about 98,000 euros, 57 per cent of the portfolio. It found that D gave false explanations and that only possession of the information could explain the order.

It fined D 60,000 euros and put the other three individuals and both firms out of the case.

This record does not show the amount of any gain, whether the decision was appealed, or the identities of the respondents and the company, which are anonymised. The analyst who spoke to D was not among the sanctioned 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. 2009-11-12 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.