Jerome Kerviel, the former Societe Generale SA (GLE) employee convicted for unauthorized transactions leading to one of the biggest trading losses in history, faces prison after a French court rejected his appeal, reports Bloomberg.
The Cour de Cassation, France’s highest appeals court, today rebuffed Kerviel’s efforts to overturn a 2012 verdict that found him guilty of abusing the bank’s trust, faking documents and entering false data into computers that resulted in a 4.9 billion-euro ($6.8 billion) loss.
The court, however, accepted Kerviel’s civil appeal that had sought to contest the bank’s charge that he was solely responsible for the loss, handing the former trader a partial victory by overturning an order that he repay the amount. Details of the loss will be examined by a court in Versailles.
“We will continue to fight to show that the so-called Kerviel case was in fact the Societe Generale case,” David Koubbi, Kerviel’s lawyer said.
Kerviel, 37, is in Italy after he undertook a 1,400-kilometer walk from Rome to Paris following a brief meeting with Pope Francis on Feb. 19. The timing and details of his incarceration will be determined later.
Societe Generale’s 2008 loss exceeded its corporate-and-investment-banking profit over the six years through 2013. Kerviel was called a “terrorist” by then-Chief Executive Officer Daniel Bouton.
Read more of this report from Bloomberg.