French judges release second trader in Societe Generale affair
PARIS (AFP) — A second trader suspected of involvement in the multi-billion-euro losses at Societe Generale was released Saturday after appearing before French judges probing the affair.
The man -- who worked for a Societe Generale subsidiary, Fimat, and who has not been named -- was made an assisted witness, a French legal term halfway between a witness and being charged.
The term suggests, however, that presiding judges Renaud van Ruymbeke and Francoise Desset may not have enough evidence to date to prove the man committed an infraction.
The man said he did not wish to answer any of the judges' questions immediately, prosecutors said. He left the court without commenting after a decision to reconvene another hearing at a later, unspecified date.
Earlier, a judicial source had said a request might be made for the suspect to be held in custody.
But the man's lawyer, Jean-David Scemama, said that suspicions of complicity with alleged rogue trader Jerome Kerviel aroused by "pseudo-evidence" had been disproved.
"All the operations he carried out are operations which were authorised, checked, monitored and, I would like to say, encouraged," he said.
"All the professional rules, all the market rules and all the instructions from his superiors," were respected, Scemama said.
The second trader was initially held for questioning by police Thursday evening after police recovered thousands of pages of instant messaging texts from the Kerviel's computer.
One message sent by the broker to Kerviel in December 2007 read, "You have done nothing illegal according to the law," French press reports said.
Kerviel is suspected of illegal deals which lost the French banking giant 4.82 billion euros (nearly seven billion dollars) -- part of a total of seven billion euros of losses announced by Societe Generale on January 24.
The 31-year-old trader has been charged with breach of trust, fabricating documents and illegally accessing computers. Although he was initially allowed out on bail, on Friday a Paris appeals court upheld a plea from the state prosecutor that Kerviel be held in custody "to avoid any consultation with possible accomplices or conspirators."
He has insisted he acted alone in unauthorised trades totalling 50 billion euros, but sources said some of his deals passed through Fimat.
A lawyer for Societe Generale, Jean Viel, said earlier the case seemed to have taken a new turn with suspicions that a second person might have been involved.
"What is known at the moment is that the two traders were friends, in communication," he told RTL radio Saturday.
"But was the (second) trader simply aware of what Jerome Kerviel was doing, or did he assist him or help him?"
Kerviel was first detained on January 26 after Societe Generale said it had fallen victim to the biggest rogue trading scandal in banking history. He was charged two days later.
The trader admitted that he had exceeded his authority to make huge wagers on the European derivatives market, falsifying emails and faxes in order to fool the bank's internal controls.
The trades were unwound by the bank during the major falls in world stocks of January 21 and 22, leading to massive losses and leaving Societe Generale dangerously exposed to a take-over bid.
According to Le Monde newspaper, Societe Generale managers have launched an internal inquiry to work out why no one at Fimat spotted the anomalies.
The French government has blamed Societe Generale's risk control mechanisms for failing to detect Kerviel's activities. Prosecutors have said Kerviel sought huge profits to get a better bonus and to improve his own reputation in the hard-driving culture.
In an interview with AFP this week Kerviel said he accepted his share of responsibility but would not be "made a scapegoat by Societe Generale."
Two days before the Societe General losses were revealed on January 24, Fimat merged with another broker, Calyon. The new firm is called Newedge.
