AMF France v. Biosynex and others (insider trading, 2024)

Judgment entered

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In July 2024 the Commission des sanctions fined the diagnostics company Biosynex, four of its directors and three of their holding companies a combined EUR 930,000. The directors sold shares in April 2020 knowing the company was about to sell all its own treasury shares, and the company failed to circulate information about Covid-19 tests that its chief executive had given to a journalist.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

—

Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

€930k

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 25 July 2024. The respondents are Biosynex, listed on Euronext Growth, its founder-directors Larry Abensur, Thierry Paper and Thomas Lamy, their holding companies ALA Financière, Axodev and AJT Financière, and Elie Fraenckel.

The notifications alleged that the planned sale by Biosynex of a block of 434,000 treasury shares was inside information, that the directors and their companies sold shares between 7 and 17 April 2020 while holding it, and that several reported their trades late. They also alleged that Biosynex and Mr Abensur failed to circulate fully and effectively information on the imminent launch of Covid-19 tests that he gave a journalist on 20 March 2020.

The Commission upheld each of these charges. It found that each individual held the information about the sale of all of Biosynex's treasury shares and used it in selling, among them 50,597 shares by Mr Abensur personally and 52,102 through ALA Financière, 82,500 by Mr Paper personally and 50,000 through Axodev, 26,000 through AJT Financière and 31,800 by Mr Fraenckel. It also upheld the late-reporting charges against Mr Abensur, Mr Lamy, Mr Fraenckel and the two holding companies concerned.

The fines were EUR 50,000 on Biosynex, 160,000 on Mr Abensur, 300,000 on ALA Financière, 150,000 on Mr Paper, 80,000 on Axodev, 50,000 on Mr Lamy, 70,000 on AJT Financière and 70,000 on Mr Fraenckel. Publication was ordered without anonymisation.

The record does not show the price effect, the profits or losses avoided, whether any respondent appealed, or any criminal case.

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. 2024-07-25 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.