A Societe Generale employee has been released without charge after being questioned over the multi-billion-euro rogue trading scandal at the French bank, a judicial source said today.
Police released the man who worked on Societe Generale's trading floor late last night after questioning him on his contacts with trader Jerome Kerviel, who is charged in connection with the scandal.
They are seeking to establish whether the detained employee may have helped Kerviel place more than €50 billion in unauthorised deals, according to the source.
Societe Generale has blamed trades made by Kerviel for the mammoth losses of €4.911 billion incurred after the bank was forced to unwind Kerviel's deals.
Police from the specialist financial brigade picked up the employee yesterday at Societe Generale's offices near Paris and searched his desk as well as his home.
Described in press reports as a 29-year-old friend of Kerviel, the employee works for the bank's SG Securities unit.
Investigators examining Kerviel's phone records found numerous calls made by him to the employee, a source close to the investigation said.
Kerviel, 31, has been charged with breach of trust, fabricating documents and illegally accessing computers in the biggest rogue trading scandal in investment banking history. He is currently being held in a Paris prison and is due to appear in court tomorrow to seek release from custody.
Investigators have failed to come up with any significant leads on possible accomplices to Kerviel. A broker who worked for Societe Generale subsidiary Fimat and who knew Kerviel was questioned twice and named as an assisted witness in the case, but no charges have been laid against him.
While Kerviel has maintained he acted alone, he has suggested that his bosses at Societe Generale knew that he was dealing with huge sums of money but turned a blind eye as long as he was making a profit.
An internal bank inquiry found that Kerviel's allegedly unauthorised trading had not been detected because of his sophisticated techniques, but it also pointed the finger at internal audit and risk control failures.
