AMF France v. A (layering, 2015)

Judgment entered

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In October 2015 the AMF Commission des sanctions fined an individual, published as A, 1,000,000 euros over layering on 27 French shares by three Chinese trading offices he ran, covering thousands of order sequences in 2009.

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

€1m

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 1st section of the Commission des sanctions decided this case on 8 October 2015. The AMF's board had notified grievances on 17 July 2014 to a single respondent, an individual published as A.

The AMF's investigators had examined 27 shares and found 8,807 cases of layering, meaning the entry of multiple orders away from the best price on one side of the book to trade on the other and then withdrawing them. Of these, 8,077 came from three Chinese offices run by A. It alleged that those offices manipulated prices by this strategy and that the breach was attributable to A as their legal representative and majority shareholder, who allegedly defined the strategy and benefited from the gains.

The Commission found that A had taken part in implementing the manipulative strategy, although it did not accept that his position as shareholder was enough on its own, and noted that it could not determine whether he was the main beneficiary after commissions and costs. The investigators' figure of about 1.5 million euros of profit across 8,006 cases was the basis for assessing gravity. It imposed a financial penalty of 1,000,000 euros.

The record does not show the final profit figure the Commission accepted, and it does not show whether the decision was appealed.

This library tags the matter as layering. 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.

• Layering — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2015-10-08 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.