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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| London bombings started rogue trader's 'spiral' of deceit |
| 2008-01-30 |
| French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel told investigators he made his first secret profits in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings, a "jackpot" that put him on the path to multi-billion-euro losses for Societe Generale, according to leaked records of his deposition. "My first experience of this kind goes back to 2005, when I took a position on [German insurance giant] Allianz shares, betting on a drop in the market," Kerviel said in comments published in Le Monde newspaper and confirmed as genuine by a judicial official. It happened that shortly afterwards the market fell as a result of the London bombings and it was a jackpot of 500,000 euros". Unable to explain his unauthorised winnings to his bosses, Kerviel says he created a a fictitious operation to conceal them, the start of a vicious spiral that ended with losses of 4.82 billion euros for Societe Generale. "More than anything, I wanted to earn money for the bank. That was my first motivation," Kerviel told investigators, explaining how he forged e-mails and documents to cover up his actions. From that point, Kerviel said he ran a parallel operation from his trading desk, racking up secret profits of up to 1.4 billion euros in December 2007 - but also losses of up to 2.5 billion euros in July 2007. Deep in the red when his rogue dealing was discovered on Friday January 18, Kerviel said he was confident he would turn his loss back into a profit by Tuesday. "What I couldn't have guessed was that I would no longer be working for Societe Generale." Kerviel insisted his bosses at Societe Generale must have been aware he was placing tens of billions of euros in risky futures trades. "Day to day, as part of normal trading with normal levels of investments, a trader cannot generate that much cash," Kerviel said. "Which leads me to believe that when I was in the black, my hierarchy was turning a blind eye towards the details and the sums involved," he said. "It suited them to let me earn money". He says he was repeatedly challenged about high-risk operations but that each time he produced fictitious documents to cover himself - and that they were readily accepted by the bank. "Their passivity pushed me to carry on ... and I was quickly sucked into a spiral that I couldn't find a way out of." |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #3 As long as you bring in cash, we don't care how you do it, if you get caught we can always deny everything. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LOST MONEY? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-01-30 22:31 |
| #2 The 21st century's "twinkies defence"? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-01-30 18:54 |
| #1 Sounds like a compulsive gambler and his enablers. |
| Posted by: treo 2008-01-30 16:04 |