AMF France v. A and B (insider trading, 2008)

Judgment entered

✓ 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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On 20 November 2008 the Commission des sanctions found that the founder-chairman and the finance director of a listed perfume-retail chain had sold shares between April 2003 and May 2004 while knowing of accounting irregularities that overstated profit by EUR 54.8 million. It imposed EUR 5 million and EUR 550,000, relying on a final criminal judgment on the same facts.

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

€5.6m

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 decided this matter on 20 November 2008, after an investigation opened in January 2005 and notifications of grievances sent on 22 February 2007. The company, called X, ran 1,231 perfume shops and was taken over after an offer announced in January 2005 from a Hong Kong group's subsidiary. The respondents were its founder and chief executive A, his son B (finance director), and two others (C and D) charged over the takeover.

The AMF alleged that A and B had sold many shares between July 2002 and May 2004 while holding inside information about accounting irregularities that materially affected the 2002 and 2003 annual accounts and the first-half 2004 accounts. The irregularities, which an earlier sanctions decision in July 2007 (upheld by the Paris Court of Appeal in June 2008) had established, inflated year-end supplier rebates and advertising participation by about EUR 54.8 million.

The Commission relied on a 9 July 2008 judgment of the Paris criminal court, which found A and B guilty of spreading false or misleading information in 2003 and 2004 and had become final as to the criminal case, to conclude that both had full knowledge of the irregularities. It counted only sales after the first affected accounts were published on 29 April 2003: 288,000 shares by A for about EUR 8.9 million and 38,000 by B for about EUR 1.1 million. It put the benefit at EUR 2,596,643 for A and EUR 274,144 for B, measured against the price offered in the takeover.

It imposed EUR 5,000,000 on A and EUR 550,000 on B (EUR 5,550,000 in all). It cleared C, a London dealer who had bought contracts for difference before the takeover, and D, the executive alleged to have passed him the information, as the evidence did not show that only inside information explained the purchases.

This record does not show the criminal sentence, which the decision does not state, or whether this 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. 2008-11-20 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.