Several French MPs on Monday demanded a reopening of the investigation into the 4.9 billion euros of losses from speculative trading incurred by the Société Générale bank in 2008, after Mediapart cited a statement given by a senior police officer involved in the case who said she was convinced by evidence and the bank’s behaviour that so-called ‘rogue trader’ Jérôme Kerviel was wrongly designated as being entirely responsible for the scandal.
Commander Nathalie Le Roy, former head of the French police’s financial crimes squad, led the initial investigation into the events in 2008, when she was of the opinion Kerviel had acted without the knowledge of his superiors. In a trial in 2010, Kerviel was given a jail sentence and ordered to pay damages equivalent to the Société Générale’s losses, while the bank was exonerated of any responsibility.
But in a statement she gave to a French judge last month, the contents of which were revealed by Mediapart on Sunday, she said a second investigation into the matter in 2012 unveiled compelling evidence that the bank, which has always maintained it was a victim of the trader’s recklessness, was aware of his extravagant trades, and had refused to hand over to her key evidence, including email records.
Conservative UMP party Member of Parliament (MP) Georges Fenech, a former investigating magistrate, said Mediapart’s report demonstrated “the impotence of the justice system in the face of the financial strength of big banks to unmask the truth from amid the false”. He said the statement of Commander Le Roy, revealed by Mediapart, “is without precedent in [French] judicial history” and that her statement “in itself justifies a retrial”.
Socialist Party MP Yann Galut has called for a parliamentary commission of enquiry into the affair following the revelations. “If what the chief investigator said is exact, we’re in face of a scandal of state,” he said, adding that the handling of the case by the public prosecutor’s office was “in question”. He said that if other witness statements corroborate Nathalie Le Roy’s statement “the Kerviel trial falls down and everything must be taken up again from scratch”.
Charles de Courson, an MP with the centre-right UDI party, and who led the 2013 parliamentary commission of enquiry into suspected protection by government of tax-dodging budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac – whose hidden foreign bank account was revealed by Mediapart in December 2012 – also supported the calls for a re-trial.
The contents of Le Roy’s statement “in no way astonished me”, he said. “I never for one instant believed that Jérôme Kerviel, no more than his trader colleagues, could have speculated such levels [of funds] without the agreement of his superiors,” added Courson.
See Mediapart’s report revealing the contents of Nathalie Le Roy’s statement.