Kerviel: 'SocGen bosses knew my trades'

The convicted former trader Jérome Kerviel said hiding trades was commonplace at Société Générale in 2007 and lax risk controls at the French bank allowed "anyone" to make huge bets worth billions of euros without being detected.

The 35-year-old is appealing a three-year jail sentence for his rolein France's biggest rogue trading scandal, which cost SocGen €4.9bn (£4bn) and forced it to raise capital in 2008 as the global financial crisis brewed.

Kerviel does not deny he masked his €50bn positions with fake covering trades but claims his superiors knew what he was doing. SocGen denies any part in the trades.

He told a Paris court that all his colleagues knew what he was doing and that hiding bets was widespread.

"Everyone did it...Everyone knew and saw what I was doing," Kerviel said. When asked who else at the bank could have taken a €5bn position, he replied: "Anyone."

SocGen's representative, Claire Dumas, said Kerviel's positions were hidden "with great ingenuity" and the bank would have had no interest in allowing its traders to build up such huge, one-way trading bets. "Société Générale's controls were undermined by Jérome Kerviel."