The Ontario Securities Commission has approved a settlement requiring payments of almost $1.5 million by a former director of investor relations of ATI Technologies Inc. and her husband, who were accused of illegal insider trading.

The settlement reached with Jo-Anne Chang and David Stone on Monday leaves only ATI chairman K. Y. Ho and his wife fighting insider-trading charges at a hearing set to open Tuesday.

In the settlement, Chang and Stone must pay disgorgement of $950,000 plus $126,000 in interest. The pair also agreed to pay $311,000 for allocation to third parties and $100,000 in OSC costs.

Most of the money will be directed to those directly harmed by the couple’s actions, or to an OSC investor education fund.

Chang also is barred from trading shares anywhere but in her RRSP account for 20 years and will not be permitted to be an officer or director of a publicly traded company for 10 years.

Stone is permanently barred from trading stocks or holding senior corporate jobs.

“The prohibitions against tipping and insider trading constitute the foundations of the investor protection provisions of the Act,” said Michael Watson, OSC director of enforcement. “The sanctions in this case seek to achieve the purposes of the Act. They protect investors by removing participants in the market who have abused those markets and send a clear message to all market participants that persons who tip and insider trade can expect serious consequences.”

The OSC, which filed its charges in January 2003, settled earlier with three other individuals and with ATI.

The cases focused on ATI’s warning on May 24, 2000, that its sales were running below forecast and it would record a quarterly loss instead of a profit. The company’s share price fell more than 50% in the two days following that disclosure.

According to agreed-upon facts in the settlement agreement, Chang’s duties at ATI from May 1996 to September 2000 included communicating with analysts and shareholders, drafting news releases and responding to media questions.

She received weekly sales summaries, and at some point before May 10, 2000 — two weeks before ATI announced that would miss its targets — Chang told her husband about concerns about ATI’s financial performance.

Acting through a brokerage account set up by the couple in February 2000 in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Stone conducted a number of transactions before May 24 that reaped a profit of $950,384.80.

In the company’s earlier settlement, ATI Technologies was reprimanded and required to pay $900,000 after acknowledging “conduct contrary to the public interest” by failing to make timely disclosure and by providing incomplete information to an OSC probe.