By Lionel Laurent
PARIS, Oct 22 (Reuters) -
Jerome Kerviel, the man behind France's biggest rogue-trading scandal,
finds out this week whether he is heading to prison or walking free
after his last court appeal in a four-year battle against former
employer Societe Generale.
Former trader Kerviel
submitted a final attempt in June to be acquitted and avoid a three-year
jail sentence handed down in 2010 for his role in taking huge, risky
bets that cost SocGen 4.9 billion euros ($6.4 billion) to unwind and
slammed the French bank's reputation.
Wednesday's verdict,
barring unexpected legal challenges, will be the final say on a case
during which Kerviel, who has kept an impassive front throughout, built a
cult following.
While Kerviel has never
denied masking the 50 billion euro positions that made headlines around
the world as the financial crisis unfolded in early 2008, he has always
said his bosses knew what he was doing - which SocGen denies.
The outcome will be
closely watched by a financial industry facing other lawsuits over
crisis-era behaviour. A similar trial is unfolding in London over the
role of trader Kweku Adoboli in a $2.3 billion loss at UBS.
"These appear to be
spectacular cases by virtue of the size of the risks taken by these
traders and the danger that they put their banks in," said Emmanuel
Moyne, a litigation lawyer at Linklaters in Paris.
"But if you compare it to
cases where the amounts involved were much smaller, it is no different
to people who simply cheated an internal controls system."
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