On May 28, 2020, the Autorité des marchés financiers, Quebec’s securities regulator, published its Enforcement Report for the period April 2019 to March 2020 (https://lautorite.qc.ca/en/general-public/publications/amf-publications/enforcement-report/)
Here are the highlights:
On the Sanctions front:
- $17,648,318 in fines and administrative penalties were imposed in proceedings brought by the AMF, 75% of which were fines under the Act respecting the distribution of financial products and services
- 83 individuals and firms were sanctioned for various offences
- 6 individuals were given a total of more than 6 years of jail time in penal proceedings
On the Surveillance and Investigations front:
- 16 cyber crime investigations, 35 general investigations, 28 joint investigations into financial crimes and 59 investigations into market abuse were opened
- Market Surveillance opened 56 new matters
On the Investor Restitution front:
- More than $1.3M was returned to victims
On the Whistleblower front:
- 104 reports were received under the Whistleblower program
- They contained information used in 10 ongoing investigation and resulted in the opening of 22 new investigations
On the Electronic Evidence Management front:
- The AMF’s electronic evidence management project advanced and a new file management tool with a business intelligence module will be implemented in 2020-2021 across its teams
On the Market Manipulation front:
- The AMF developed an algorithmic approach which should allow it to detect a larger number of complex schemes and reduce processing times