Abuse of privileged information (“insider trading”) – The Court of Cassazione returns to the subject of the origin of the information used

The Italian Court of Cassazione returns to the subject of the abuse of privileged information, with a sentence of the Fifth Criminal Chamber in which it stated that, for the purposes of integrating the crime referred to in art. 184 of Legislative Decree no. 58 of 1998, it is not required that the information be transmitted to the agent by a third party, nor that it relates to a fact produced by a third party. (In application of this principle, the Court deemed the so-called "insider trading of oneself" criminally relevant, in a case of "mopping up" of the shares of a joint stock company operated - before the communication to the market of the decision to proceed with a '' public purchase offer of the same securities and abusing this information - by the chief executive officer and the chairman of the board of directors of the company, creators of the takeover bid, through a limited liability company belonging to the same group and in conjunction with his sole director).

The judgment traces the themes already expressed previously by the Supreme Court with the well-known sentence no. 24310 of 16 October 2017 of the 2nd Criminal Chamber of the Cassazione.