CORNWALL/TORONTO – The mutual fund provider for former Cornwall financial advisor Gilles Latour has been fined $125,000, plus $20,000 in legal costs.
A hearing panel of the Mutual Fund Dealers Association (MFDA) approved the terms of a settlement agreement with Equity Associates Inc. during a hearing Wednesday (June 20).
Equity Associates is a mutual fund dealer and was the provider of mutual fund products to Latour Financial Group – Gilles Latour’s now-defunct company. MFDA is a country-wide regulator of the mutual fund industry and the 82,000 people approved to sell mutual funds.
Equity was facing six separate allegations surrounding bookkeeping and supervisory procedures, which it admitted to as part of the agreement. Specifically in regard to Latour, the firm had failed to conduct a “reasonable supervisory investigation in response to information it received” after Latour was charged in August 2014.
Equity has to pay $82,500 immediately and will then have to pay the remaining $62,500 within six months.
Latour, 52, is serving a two year sentence for defrauding eight clients of nearly $1.3 million.