Cast as the victim, Jérôme Kerviel fights on against SocGen

In one of the early scenes in L’Outsider, the new film about rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel which is released on Wednesday, his boss explains to him how to game the comically lax controls at their employer Société Générale.

Hung-over after a night out with strippers, Kerviel had made a mistake and lost €100,000. His boss tells him to relax, and shows him a way to create false trades that will hide a risky position, enabling them to quickly win the money back. “It’s a classic trick,” he says.

This is the moment in the film where Kerviel, whose unauthorised trading cost SocGen €4.9bn in 2008, gets a taste for forgery. And everyone is in on it. His immediate superiors teach him the technique, the ones just above turn a blind eye.

This is exactly the version of the Kerviel affair that SocGen, after eight years of legal and public relations battles, did not want to get another airing. It is the version that has long been touted by Kerviel himself, and vigorously denied by SocGen, who say he was a “financial terrorist” acting alone.

The film supports the view by many on the political left in France that Kerviel, son of a seaside hairdresser and a metalwork teacher, was simply a naive victim of big finance, enticed by a corrupt system that pushed him to break the rules.

Kerviel is to many an anti-establishment folk hero, with his own song and cartoon character. Some on the left have compared him to Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer and victim of anti-Semitism who was unjustly charged with treason in the 19th century.

His support is symbolic of France’s complex relationship with high-finance, which even President François Hollande declared as his “enemy” in 2012. Unlike rogue traders in the UK or the US, Kerviel is seen by much of the country as the wronged party.

“The French have had a unique reaction to the Kerviel affair,” says Michel Wieviorka, a French sociologist. “He is not a whistleblower, he is not a very sympathetic character, but he is seen by many as a victim of a malfunctioning financial system.”

The film, directed by Christophe Barratier, comes at an unwelcome time for SocGen which, after eight years of victories in the courts against Kerviel, has also seen the legal tides turn against it over the past fortnight.

First, Kerviel was awarded more than €400,000 in compensation from SocGen for unfair dismissal after a Paris employment tribunal said that — despite building trading positions that were nearly twice the value of the bank — he was fired “without real and serious cause”.

Rubbing salt in the wound, the judge in the tribunal, Hugues Cambournac, said he supported Kerviel’s side of the story that his bosses knew about his fake trades and turned a blind eye. “Société Générale can’t pretend it was not aware of Jérôme Kerviel’s fake operations,” he said.

Last week saw similar claims made in a much more significant case going through the French courts, which met to determine how much of the €4.9bn loss suffered by SocGen in 2008 should Kerviel have to pay in damages.

When Kerviel was initially sentenced to three years in prison in 2010 he was ordered to repay the €4.9bn lost by SocGen. On appeal in 2014, while the courts upheld the criminal conviction, they called for another civil trial on the level of damages to be paid.

Jean-Marie d’Huy, the state assistant prosecutor in the damages case, last Friday said that Kerviel should not have to pay any damages at all because of the lax controls that were in place at the time.

He said SocGen was responsible for a “voluntary slackening of the rules with a view toward short-term gain” and that this was “sufficient to wipe out their right to any damages” from Kerviel.

A final ruling will be given by three judges at the Versailles court of appeals later this year. But, in France, the opinion of the public prosecutor leading the trial carries significant weight.

SocGen said it was “surprised” by the prosecutor’s position.

The outcome of this case could have consequences beyond public relations for SocGen. Budget minister Christian Eckert said losing the civil case could mean the bank will be asked to pay back some of the €2.2bn tax deduction it won when the losses were announced in 2008.

SocGen points out that no state court has ruled against it. Lengthy criminal cases in 2010 and 2014 both found evidence of poor controls, for which SocGen paid a €4m fine, but no conspiracy at the bank where superiors secretly knew about Kerviel’s unauthorised trades.

“All those who claim that the bank knew, or couldn’t have ‘not known’, were not directly involved in the events,” says SocGen in a statement on the case, as it encouraged people to read the court verdicts that say Kerviel acted alone.

The bank also says that, regardless of the verdict in the damages trial, there is no chance that the €2.2bn tax benefit could be reviewed, because Kerviel has been found guilty by the criminal courts.

But the run of bad news for SocGen highlights how this case refuses to go away for the French lender, in sharp contrast to other banks around the world who have found it far easier to move on from rogue trading scandals.

People inside SocGen look longingly at the UK and how rogue traders such as UBS’s Kweku Adoboli and Barings Bank’s Nick Leeson were simply vilified in the press and sent promptly to prison.

Few had political backing as Kerviel. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France’s far left party, in March called for a retrial of Kerviel’s criminal case. “I am convinced by the innocence of Jérôme Kerviel,” he said.