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