French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel jailed in Nice
French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel has been jailed in Nice to begin his three year sentence. He was arrested just before midnight on Sunday after crossing the Italian/French border.
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After midnight he would have been officially considered a fugitive on the run.
He walked from the Italian border town of Ventimiglia and at the border crossing into Menton in France he was met by two police officers in plain clothes who drove him away in a car.
He was taken to the police station in Menton, where he spent the night.
His arrest followed an extraordinary weekend during which Kerviel, surrounded by dozens of supporters, was at the centre of a media frenzy.
While for some, he is a cause celebre who has been unfairly made to pay for the failings of a banking sector which was out of control, others denounce what they see as a cynical manipulation of public opinion.
Lawyer Jean Veil, for Société Générale, where Kerviel worked when he lost 4.9 billion euros as a result of risky trading, said on French radio station Europe 1 today that Kerviel’s appeal to French president François Hollande to examine his case, was “scandalous”.
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