French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel said on Wednesday he was a scapegoat for others after being jailed for three years and ordered to pay back the five billion euros his market gambles cost Societe Generale bank.
“I am crushed by the weight of the sentence,” he said in his first public reaction to his conviction Tuesday.
He was convicted of breach of trust, forgery and entering false data into computers at Societe Generale, one of Europe’s biggest banks.
“I have the feeling that they wanted me to pay the price for everyone else and that it was necesssary to save the [Société] Générale bank and that they killed soldier Kerviel,” the 33-year-old told Europe 1 radio.
Kerviel has lodged an appeal.
“When the judgement was delivered, my first thought was for my father and for my mother. Obviously it hurts,” he told Europe 1.
His lawyer had called for him to be acquitted of all charges except the false computer logs, blaming the bank for the 2008 scandal that almost destroyed it and claiming the trader’s bosses knew what he was up to. – Reuters