Trader Claims Hiding Trades Commonplace, 'Anyone' Could Have Bet Billions

Reuters reports that convicted former trader Jerome Kerviel has said that hiding trades was commonplace at Societe Generale in 2007 and lax risk controls at the French bank allowed 'anyone' to make huge bets worth billions of euros without being detected.

In court appealing his conviction, Kerviel was questioned by the presiding judge and SocGen's lawyers over one of his hidden trades - a multi-billion dollar bet in March 2007 that the German stock market would fall. The former trader told the Paris court that all his colleagues knew what he was doing and that hiding bets was widespread.

'Everyone did it...Everyone knew and saw what I was doing', said Kerviel.

When asked who else at the bank could have taken such huge bets, Kerviel replied: 'Anyone'.

Finally, Bloomberg reports that R. Allen Stanford, convicted of a $7bn Ponzi scheme, should be sentenced to the maximum allowable term of 230 years in prison, prosecutors have argued in court papers.

Stanford, who the government said is seeking a sentence of 'time served', is to be sentenced next week in U.S. District Court in Houston.

'Robert Allen Stanford is a ruthless predator responsible for one of the most egregious frauds in history', the Justice Department said in a 34-page filing. 'Displaying an audacity that only further illustrates his depravity, Stanford seeks a sentence of time served, brazenly arguing that there are no losses' and rehashing arguments rejected by the jury that convicted him in March.