Jérôme Kerviel bank a profit of US$2 billion as of 2007. Managers for Société Générale have described some of the means Kerviel employed to avoid the bank's internal controls and escape detection. Its Executive Chairman Daniel Bouton describes the pattern as like "a mutating virus" in which hundreds of thousands of trades were hidden behind offsetting faked hedge trades. Officials say Kerviel was careful to close the trades in just two or three days, just before the trades' timed controls would trigger notice from the bank's internal control system, and Kerviel would then shift those older positions to newly initiated trades. City
Criminal responsibility in French law Criminal responsibility in French law Criminal responsibility is the obligation in French law to answer for infractions committed and to suffer the punishment provided by the legislation that governs the infraction in question. In a democracy citizens have rights but also duties: with freedom comes responsibility. Unlike civil liability, the obligation to answer for damage one has caused, either by repairing it or paying damages and interest for it, criminal responsibility implies legal recourse for the state against a disturbance of the peace. This includes three major factors: The penal code declares that the authorship of a crime includes not