Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader who cost Société Générale almost €5 billion, is a malevolent genius who came close to destroying the French bank, its former executive chairman told a court yesterday.
Daniel Bouton, who left the bank last year, told Paris criminal court that the “survival” of SocGen was at stake after discovering that Mr Kerviel had taken unauthorised positions of €50 billion.
“We all had to fight together to save a business that one man alone almost managed to bring to the ground,” said Mr Bouton, who was called to give evidence by judges trying Mr Kerviel on charges of breach of trust, computer abuse and forgery. The former trader is accused of lying and falsifying documents to hide his trades and faces a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a fine of €375,000 if found guilty.
The court has heard that when Mr Kerviel’s positions were unwound in January 2008, SocGen recorded a loss of €4.9 billion.
Mr Bouton, who had not met the junior trader, said: “We had never imagined that anyone could produce such a fraud on an activity outside their remit.
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“It is this malevolent genius: he used the bank’s tools to do something which had absolutely nothing to do with what he should have been doing. The very principle of his activity was that the positions should be covered every evening.”
Mr Kerviel admits taking unauthorised positions, but denies criminal wrongdoing as his superiors knew of his trades and turned a blind eye as long as he was making a profit.