The Financial Times today has an article about Jérôme Kerviel and the Société Générale scandal. Kerviel’s lawyers are claiming that SocGen is using the affair to conceal other losses.
Elisabeth Meyer and Christian Charrière-Bournazel told Agence France Presse that SocGen wanted to “raise a smokescreen that would distract the public’s attention from far more substantial losses that it had made in recent months, notably in the unbelievable subprime affair”.
They also said that the timing of the bank’s decision to close positions relating to Mr Kerviel’s trading and the manner it executed these trades “itself provoked the losses of €4.5bn”. The lawyers also claimed that Mr Kerviel’s trading was in profit to the tune of €1.5bn ($2.2bn, £1.1bn) at December 31.
Kerviel’s legal team went on to accuse Société Générale of increasing the losses by dumping Kerviel’s positions in the current declining market rather that taking time to assess the overall situation.
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