COB provisionally suspends all administrative enforcement action

The Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB) has provisionally suspended all its administrative enforcement action following the decision of a French Court of Appeal. On 7 March 2000, the French Court of Appeal decided, in KPMG v. COB, that the COB procedures that led to the imposition of a penalty on KPMG in respect of defective accounts of a listed company infringed KPMG`s rights to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Specifically, the overlapping memberships of the COB enforcement committee that decided to bring the complaint against KPMG and the enforcement committee that decided on culpability and penalty infringed the right to an impartial tribunal.