The Ontario Securities Commission is asking for leave to appeal a court ruling that slashed the suspension handed out to Piergiorgio Donnini, the former head trader at Yorkton Securities.

Donnini was found guilty of illegal insider trading last year when he decided to sell short shares in technology company Kasten Chase, shortly after Yorkton’s former CEO told him that the company was planning an issue of stock warrants.

An OSC panel handed him a 15-year trading ban for that and prohibited him from acting as an officer or director of a publicly traded company for a similar period.

But an Ontario court subsequently reduced that suspension to four years, noting that one member of the three-person panel thought that Donnini was not guilty of insider trading. The court also thought a ban that long was out of step with suspensions handed out to other Yorkton executives.

The court also told the OSC to hold another hearing into the $186,052 in costs it had ordered Donnini to pay.

The OSC served notice Friday that it plans to appeal both the reduced suspension and the order to have it review costs.

In addition to the trading and directorship ban, Donnini agreed in December 2001 to pay a $1 million fine and was banned from the industry for two years.