Suspended Ajax director denies insider trading, asks financial regulator to weigh in

Alex Kroes will submit his controversial purchase of Ajax shares last summer to the stock exchange watchdog AFM, the general manager of the Amsterdam club said after the supervisory board suspended him. According to the Amsterdam football club, Kroes purchased 17,000 shares with approximately 190,000 euros shortly before his appointment. Ajax considers that insider trading and wants to dismiss the director, who started in March.

“My moral compass says I cannot simply accept this decision of the supervisory board,” Kroes said in a statement on the social media platform LinkedIn. “I will now independently go to the AFM to present my case in order to arrive at an independent judgment.”

Kroes said that he bought Ajax shares “in bits and pieces” between 6 April 2022 and 26 July 2023, amounting to 42,500 shares. He purchased over 17,000 shares shortly before his appointment on 2 August 2023. “At that time, I had not yet agreed with Ajax, but - because of my own intentions - I had a good feeling about it,” he said. “I thought it was a positive signal to radiate confidence in the club and to shareholders.”

On Tuesday morning, Ajax’s supervisory board announced that it had immediately suspended the general manager and chairman of the board due to “very strong indications of insider trading.” The Amsterdam club said it plans to “permanently terminate” the partnership. A week before it was announced that he would become the new director, Kroes paid around 190,000 euros for the over 17,000 shares.

Kroes said that he “never made a secret” of the fact that he has shares in the club. “In fact, I pointed out to Ajax in August last year that I had this package and that I would like to hear how to deal with it because I had not yet mastered the specific rules,” he said. “That question has not been answered to date.”

Kroes said the supervisory board has had months to “find something about the fact that I purchased these shares.” He said the board never confronted him about it or asked any questions.

The Association of Stock Owners (VEB) called it “very stupid” that Kroes bought Ajax shares a week before it became known that he would become the new director of the football club, regardless of whether it involved insider trading or not. “I don’t think that Kroes deliberately tried to ride the share. It was just stupid,” said VEB director and former director at the AFM Gerben Everts.

According to Everts, whether this involved insider trading and, therefore, a criminal offense depends on the concreteness of Kroes's information at the time of the purchase. “For example, if Kroes knew about a proposed decision of the day of the transaction, that is concrete.”