AMF France v. X (insider dealing, charges rejected, 2011)

Dismissed

✓ 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 1 December 2011 the Commission des sanctions put an individual out of the case after he was charged with insider dealing for buying cooperative investment certificates of a regional bank 16 days before it announced a buy-back at a 120 per cent premium. The Paris Court of Appeal later reversed this and imposed EUR 70,000.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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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.

What is alleged to have happened

The second section of the Commission des sanctions of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) heard the case in public and decided it on 1 December 2011. The respondent is anonymised as X, and the file also names his son as Y.

The case concerned the listed cooperative investment certificates (CCI) of Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel d'Aquitaine. On 23 September 2009 the bank announced it was studying a buy-back of all of its CCI, and on 30 September it set a price of EUR 33.60, a 120 per cent premium over the last quoted price of EUR 15.30. The AMF found that on 7 September 2009 X had bought 3,265 CCI at about EUR 15.62, and the notification of grievances alleged that he did so using inside information.

The Commission accepted that the buy-back project was inside information in the relevant period, but ruled that the evidence did not show that only that information could explain the purchase. It pointed to X's long relationship with the bank, the sale of property that had given him funds to invest and the role of his son in the decision. It put X out of the case, so no sanction was imposed, and ordered anonymised publication. The decision also refers to the Paris prosecutor's notice closing the criminal insider-dealing file without further action, dated 31 October 2011.

The linked document also contains a later Paris Court of Appeal judgment of 3 October 2013, brought by the AMF Chairman, which confirmed that the information was inside information but reformed the Commission's decision, held that X had used it and imposed a EUR 70,000 sanction. That sanction is not the Commission's, so it is not recorded in the penalty field; the status above reflects the Commission's decision only.

This record does not show whether the 2013 judgment was itself challenged further, or any other proceedings.

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. 2011-12-01 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.