AMF France v. Delta Drone, A, B, C and D (insider trading, 2018)

Judgment entered

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On 13 April 2018 the Commission des sanctions fined two individuals EUR 200,000 and EUR 400,000 for selling Delta Drone shares in mid-2014 while holding inside information about the company's tight cash position, and fined the company EUR 100,000 for not publishing the size of its 2013 loss promptly. It cleared two supervisory board members of failing to declare their companies' trades.

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

€700k

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 (first section) decided the case on 13 April 2018. The AMF had opened its inquiry in August 2014 into Delta Drone's financial information and the market in its shares, and notifications of grievances were sent to the company and four individuals in August 2016.

The notifications alleged that Delta Drone failed to disclose as soon as possible, from 28 March 2014, the scale of its 2013 loss; that A and B, members of its supervisory board, failed to declare trades in Delta Drone shares made by companies linked to them; and that C sold 103,220 shares between 2 June and 12 August 2014 and D sold 220,681 shares between 16 and 29 July 2014 while holding inside information on the company's strained cash position.

The Commission found that the company had no valid ground for delaying publication of the loss, and that C, then chairman of the management board, held the cash-position information from 25 May 2014 and, as a primary insider, was presumed to have used it; his property project and wish to leave the company did not displace that presumption. It found D had the same information, that his sale orders of 15 and 16 July 2014 came before the emails he cited to explain them, and that the lapse of time did not help him.

It fined Delta Drone EUR 100,000, C EUR 200,000 and D EUR 400,000, and put A and B out of the case. It ordered publication on the AMF website for five years, non-anonymised except for A and B.

This record does not show D's position in the company or whether the decision was appealed.

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. 2018-04-13 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.