A second trader suspected of involvement in the multi-billion-euro losses at Societe Generale was released Saturday after appearing before French judges probing the affair.
The man — who worked for a Societe Generale subsidiary, Fimat, and who has not been named — was made an assisted witness, a French legal term halfway between a witness and being charged.
The term suggests, however, that presiding judges Renaud van Ruymbeke and Francoise Desset may not have enough evidence to date to prove the man committed an infraction.
The man said he did not wish to answer any of the judges’ questions immediately, prosecutors said. He left the court without commenting after a decision to reconvene another hearing at a later, unspecified date.
Earlier, a judicial source had said a request might be made for the suspect to be held in custody.
But the man’s lawyer, Jean-David Scemama, said that suspicions of complicity with alleged rogue trader Jerome Kerviel aroused by “pseudo-evidence” had been disproved.
“All the operations he carried out are operations which were authorised, checked, monitored and, I would like to say, encouraged,” he said.
“All the professional rules, all the market rules and all the instructions from his superiors,” were respected, Scemama said.
The second trader was initially held for questioning by police Thursday evening after police recovered thousands of pages of instant messaging texts from the Kerviel’s computer.
One message sent by the broker to Kerviel in December 2007 read, “You have done nothing illegal according to the law,” French press reports said.
