I got carried away, says SocGen’s rogue trader

The Frenchman accused of being behind a £3.7bn bank fraud admitted on Tuesday: ‘You lose your sense of the sums involved when you are in this kind of work. It’s disembodied. You get a bit carried away.’  While working as a £75,000-a-year trader for Societe Generale, France’s second biggest bank, Jerome Kerviel was gambling up to £37bn – more than his bank’s worth.  It is alleged that he circumvented internal controls with stolen computer access codes and fictitious documents.  However, he told investigators that the bank must have known what he was doing because of the profits he had generated previously, and suggested his bosses ‘turned a blind eye’ as long as he was not in the red.  His losses were revealed by the bank on January 24.  He was arrested a few days later but released on bail within 48 hours after being charged with breach of trust, using false documents and unauthorised computer access.