Senior Societe Generale officials "closed their eyes" to a culture of cheating on the trading floor, so long as it generated profits, the alleged rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel, told investigators.
In verbatim extracts from his questioning at the weekend Kerviel says the ruling maxim of SocGen was: "Not
seen, not caught. If you are caught, you are hanged."
"I cannot believe that my superiors were not aware of the kinds of sums that I was committing," Kerviel told investigators. "As long as we earned money and things weren't too obvious, nothing was said."
France's second largest bank has already been thrown on to the defensive by the decision of two investigating judges to drop a possible charge of fraud against Kerviel.
Instead Kerviel was accused of three counts of forgery, breach of confidence and computer hacking.
The bank has insisted that Kerviel's "unauthorised" trades on European share futures were an act of "exceptional fraud" or even "financial terrorism". The amount lost - €4.9 billion ($9.3 billion) - is the largest sum ever to be attributed to the misdeeds of a single trader.
The investigating judges appear to have accepted Kerviel's argument that he was not seeking personal gain but cutting corners to make money for the bank.
It emerged this week that a trader in the same department as Kerviel committed suicide last year after evading official bank controls and losing €9 million.
The investigating judges, Renaud van Ruymbeke and Francoise Desset, released Kerviel from custody on condition that he remain in France and keep away from trading floors.
- INDEPENDENT
