AMF France v. Orco Property Group, B, A and C (misleading information and insider dealing, 2012)

Judgment entered

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On 22 October 2012 the Commission des sanctions found that Orco Property Group misled the market in 2008 communications, including a false statement that historic shareholders had sold no shares, and that its vice-president sold shares while holding inside information about its deteriorating finances. It fined the company, two officers and the vice-president EUR 660,000 in total.

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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Penalty as published

€660k

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 of the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) decided the case on 22 October 2012. Orco Property Group is named; the three individuals appear as B (a current officer), A (a former officer) and C (vice-president and executive committee member).

The notifications of grievances alleged three sets of facts. First, that Orco's 2008 communications were inaccurate or misleading: the attribution of improved adjusted EBITDA to the property-development business, the treatment of cash that was pledged or blocked, the classification of a EUR 58 million Czech bond after a rating downgrade, and an 18 September 2008 announcement that historic shareholders had sold none of their shares. Second, that the company breached the disclosure rules for its share buy-back programme. Third, that C had sold 17,784 shares between 15 December 2008 and 10 February 2009 while holding inside information. The company entered a safeguard procedure in March 2009.

The Commission upheld the grievances on the EBITDA statement, the cash figures and the 18 September 2008 announcement, which was inaccurate because Ott & Co, a company held by B, had sold 235,402 Orco shares days earlier. It rejected the Czech bond grievance. It also found that the company had not made the buy-back declarations or announced the change to the programme. It found C, as an executive committee member on the insider list, had held inside information from 14 December 2008 and so avoided a loss of about EUR 85,500.

It fined Orco EUR 100,000, B EUR 80,000, A EUR 30,000 and C EUR 450,000, EUR 660,000 in total, and ordered publication, anonymising A.

This record does not show whether the decision was appealed, or the effect of the statements on the share price. The false-information findings concern company disclosure and have no matching library technique, so only insider dealing is tagged.

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. 2012-10-22 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.