The Administrative Court of Financial Markets (TMF) decided on July 18: the managers of Dubuc Motors, the company behind the Tomahawk electric prototype, will have to pay $ 145,000 in fines in total.
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Mario Dubuc will receive the heaviest sanction with $ 105,000, followed by the company ($ 30,000) and its co -founder Mihalis Kakogiannakis ($ 10,000).
This decision puts an end to an investigation by the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) which has lasted since 2017. The TMF confirmed that managers illegally placed shares with 27 Quebec investors between March and November 2017, collecting $ 265,500 without respecting the securities law.
“There is no logic which can justify such a length of years of investigation,” deplored Kakogiannakis in 2021, alleging a relentlessness of the AMF. The businessman underlined the difficulties in growing a company subject to an investigation, an argument that the court does not seem to have retained.
Mario Dubuc, who declared bankruptcy in 2019, is also prohibited any activity on the financial markets for five years. More than 800 Quebec and American investors have bet $ 1.8 million on this Quebec electric vehicle project.
The dream of marketing one of the first electric vehicles made in Quebec seems definitively compromised. The company can no longer request an investor since 2017, and this final sanction closes a chapter which will have lasted eight years.