AMF France v. Scientex (insider trading, 2018)

Settled

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 5, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the French decision; an independent second reading of 60 of the AMF records agreed on every field for 54 and on the core fields for 59. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In January 2018 the AMF agreed a settlement with Scientex, a company run by a Crossject board member, over the purchase of 17,500 Crossject shares shortly before a financing announcement; it agreed to pay EUR 40,000.

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

€40k

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 AMF published an administrative settlement (accord de composition administrative) with Scientex, dated 10 January 2018. This is not a contested sanctions hearing. The agreement took effect only once the AMF Collège validated it and the Commission des sanctions homologated it; the document gives the signing date but not the homologation date, so the signing date is used here.

Crossject is a French biotechnology company listed on Alternext. On 6 November 2015 it announced EUR 6.7 million of financing from Bpifrance, and the shares closed up 40.86%. The AMF noted that shortly before, Timothée Muller, a member of its management board, had bought 17,500 shares through Scientex, the company he ran.

The first grievance was use of inside information about the Bpifrance decision, which the AMF said was inside information from 22 October 2015; the shares were bought on 27 October, giving an unrealised gain of EUR 18,200. The second was late and incorrect reporting of the trades. Scientex said the purchase continued a plan to buy on price falls and brought it no benefit.

Scientex agreed to pay EUR 40,000 to the Treasury within fifteen days of homologation. A parallel agreement with Mr Muller (EUR 10,000) is recorded separately. The agreement records that the Parquet national financier told the AMF on 25 July 2017 that it did not wish to bring a prosecution against Scientex for these facts, so no criminal case is stated.

What the record does not show: the agreement describes conduct that the person "could" or "would" have committed, so it records allegations and undertakings, not a finding of breach, and it is not styled as a fine. It does not show whether any later challenge occurred.

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. 2018-01-10 Settlement agreed (homologated by the Commission des sanctions)

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 settlement page
• Settlement (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.