AMF France v. M. Miron Leshem, Grantchester Equity Limited and others (price manipulation, 2024)

Judgment entered

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In January 2024 the Commission des sanctions fined a Delaware consulting company and four individuals a combined EUR 4.4 million for a share-selling scheme built around a so-called market making programme in three small Paris-listed stocks in 2018 and 2019, and fined three further individuals for unreported share dealings.

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

€4.6m

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 AMF, first section, decided the matter on 24 January 2024. The respondents are Miron Leshem and his firm Grantchester Equity Limited, Aude Planche of the Paris office of an alternative investment fund, Dirck Van Wylick, who ran share-promotion businesses, and three further individuals: Serge Goldner, Christian Person and Léon Lucide.

The notifications alleged that Mr Leshem and Grantchester designed and ran a scheme in the shares of Gour Medical, Umalis and CIOA that gave false signals, fixed prices at an artificial level, used fictitious devices and built a dominant position for the vehicles that were selling. Ms Planche and Mr Van Wylick were charged with taking part. The three officers were charged with failing to declare their own transactions.

The Commission found manipulation proved against Grantchester and Mr Leshem on all three stocks, against Ms Planche on all three, and against Mr Van Wylick on Gour Medical and Umalis. The decision describes the programme as a route for insiders of small issuers to sell their shares through an intermediary against price targets, with a lock-up on other shareholders and promotion, and it found that the selling vehicles achieved a dominant position in supply. It found Mr Goldner, Mr Person and Mr Lucide had breached the duty to notify managers' transactions.

The fines were EUR 2,000,000 on Mr Leshem, 1,000,000 on Grantchester, 1,000,000 on Mr Van Wylick, 400,000 on Ms Planche, 25,000 on Mr Goldner, 100,000 on Mr Person and 100,000 on Mr Lucide, EUR 4,625,000 in total.

The record does not show the proceeds of the scheme, how the fund connected to Ms Planche acted, whether any respondent appealed, or any criminal case.

This library tags the matter as price manipulation. 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.

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

Timeline

1. 2024-01-24 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.