The Practices of Quebec's Securities and Exchange Commission in Managing Stock Market Illegalisms

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

Unlike crimes against the person or property handled by the police, stock market offences (market manipulation and insider trading) benefit from an uncertainty as to their legal treatment and their criminal status. This differential treatment translates into their legal categorisation (financial legislation), the institution responsible for their regulation (administrative regulator) and the variety of sanctions available (Lascoumes 1996). In Quebec, the “Autorité des marchés financiers” (AMF) is in charge of managing those stock market “illegalisms” (Foucault, 1975). The AMF’s investigation practices reflect how some cases are more prioritized than others in accordance with a series of determinants. The first are situational, for instance the investigators’ opinion or the case’s media coverage. The second are structural, such as the provincial structure of the Canadian financial regulation. The latter are institutional, for example the availability of human, financial and technical resources. Based on a Foucaldian theoretical perspective and my ethnographic experience during a year of participant observation within the AMF’s investigative division, this poster aims to present concretely how AMF’s actors manage cases of market abuse according to a game prioritization, allowing them to distinguish bad cases from good ones, and ultimately the “nice” offenders from the “spiteful” who must be prosecuted.

Author

• Marie Badrudin, Université de Montréal