Today the UK government announced a consultation for a criminal sanctions regime (i.e. with jail sentences) to enforce the insider trading and market manipulation rules around REMIT. The consultation documents can be found here on the DECC web site.

The rules will supplement the laws already in place since last year that support bringing civil sanctions (i.e. fines) for REMIT. These rules focus on Articles 3 and 5 of REMIT around Insider Trading and Market Manipulation, which are considered the more serious elements of the rules. They avoid the more “administrative” parts of the rules, such as trade reporting and monitoring.

Interestingly, much of the focus at the moment has been on the emerging trade reporting rules. With these sanctions on the way, there is now likely to be an additional track of work to look at.