Rogue trader: I acted similar to a finish idiot

Adam Sage in Paris & ,}

The brute merchant who lost his bank roughly €164.5 billion told a French justice that he had acted in a "completely idiotic" approach when he staked tens of billions of euros on the batch market.

But Jrôme Kerviel insisted that it was customary use for traders at Socit Gnrale, the French bank where he was employed, to take positions in additional of the central limits.

His usually mistake, he told Paris Criminal Court, was to have left serve than his colleagues. These techniques, it was not me who invented them, he pronounced on the second day of his hearing for crack of trust, computer abuse and forgery. That I went as well far, I confess it but a problem. It was completely idiotic.

Mr Kerviel, 33, faces a limit judgment of five years in prison and a excellent of €375,000 if found guilty at the finish of the trial, that is approaching to last three weeks.

The justice listened that he had taken positions value a sum of €50 billion, 400 times higher than the central roof for the complete table on that he worked.

When he was detected in Jan 2008 and the positions were unwound, SocGen recorded a loss of €4.9billion.

But Mr Kerviel insisted that managers had been wakeful of his activities and had encouraged him to continue. He pronounced he had speculated outrageous sums " because my superiors asked me to do it and since it done income for the bank. I didnt censor what I did. It was tolerated.

Under doubt from Dominique Pauth, the presiding judge, Mr Kerviel pronounced he had done a distinction of €500,000 with a gamble that the batch marketplace would tumble after the London militant attacks in 2005.

The primary greeting of his managers was that he had been wrong to surpass his authorised ceiling, but at the finish of the year, they told me it was brilliant and pronounced I should do the same thing the following year. He added: "Year after year, I used a trade plan that worked, the increase got bigger and bigger. Mr Kerviel pronounced that if management team had abandoned his activities, it meant "they cant count, they cant read.

Jean-Michel Aldebert, the prosecutor, interjected: "You were the usually person on the table who unsuccessful to apply oneself the boundary and you hid what you did. Thats false, Mr Kerviel replied. I cant let you get afar with saying that. Seventy per cent of the time, the boundary were broken.

Jean-François Lepetit, a former authority of the French Financial Markets Authority, told the justice that Mr Kerviel had acted irresponsibly as he gamble billions on markets. He said: He was similar to a sleepwalker on a purloin range.

Jean-Pierre Mustier, head of Socit Gnrales investment bank at the time of the scandal, angrilydenied Mr Kerviels explain that he had been wakeful of the traders deals. The hierarchy is me and the hierarchy did not know, pronounced Mr Mustier, who quiescent last year. You have regularly lied to me, Monsieur Kerviel.