French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Monday that he would investigate the insider trading scandal involving European Space and Defense Company (EADS), the parent company of Airbus, and find out if the government was involved.
"If there are people who committed fraud at EADS, judicial officials must get to the bottom of it so that we know the truth and those who behaved dishonestly be punished in proportion to what they did."
The French president said he wanted to "know what the responsibilities of the state were at the time".
French daily "Le Figaro" reported last Wednesday that massive insider trading had been committed by the senior management of EADS, who sold and swapped shares between November 2005 and March 2006, well before the difficulties at Airbus were made public. The report said the former French government knew the details of the scandal.
Over a seven-month period, the EADS share price tumbled from a high of 30 euros in November 2005 to a low of about 18 euros in June 2006, a fall of about 40 percent. France's financial markets regulator AMF has investigated the activities of 21 senior management and reported their findings to the judicial department.
Source: Xinhua
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