Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader who lost almost €5 billion, is a cheat, a liar and a manipulator who should be imprisoned for four years, a state prosecutor told Paris Criminal Court yesterday.
Jean-Michel Aldebert said a stiff jail term was necessary to end the discredit heaped by Mr Kerviel, not just on Société Générale, the French bank that employed him, but on the banking system in general.
Charged with breach of trust, computer abuse and forgery, the trader faces a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a fine of €375,000 if found guilty. Mr Aldebert called for a five-year sentence with the final year suspended and did not specify the level of the fine he wished to be imposed.
During the two-and-a-half week trial, the court has heard that Mr Kerviel took positions totalling €50 billion — 400 times the authorised ceiling for the entire desk on which he worked.
When his activities were discovered and his positions unwound in January 2008, the bank registered a loss of €4.9 billion — which it demanded this week he be ordered to pay back.
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Mr Kerviel has admitted exceeding his authorised limits but denies criminal wrongdoing on the grounds that his superiors knew what he was doing and encouraged him to continue.
But Mr Aldebert said that the trader was a cynical, highly trained “professional of fraud” who employed an “organised, methodical and continuous system”. “Jérôme Kerviel truly wanted to hide his actions,” he said.
Mr Aldebert said that Mr Kerviel had sought to portray himself as a puppet dancing to the SocGen’s tune in the pursuit of profit. “It’s Jérôme Kerviel you are judging here, not the Société Générale as the defence lawyers would have you believe,” he said.
But Philippe Bourion, the second state prosecutor to speak in court, said that he was unable to explain Mr Kerviel’s motivations, given that there was no suggestion of personal enrichment.
“Why did he commit these acts? The hope of a bonus? To become a star? Permanent dissatisfaction? The need for strong emotions? This will be the only obscure question on which the prosecution has been unable to shed light.”
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The trial is due to end today, when the judges are likely to announce that they will delay their ruling until later this summer.