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Societe Generale said it discovered the fraud last weekend and unwound the trader's losing bets starting Monday, when world markets tumbled.
Some experts have suggested Societe Generale may have exacerbated the fall and indirectly led to the U.S. Federal Reserve's subsequent decision to cut rates.
In an interview published Saturday, Societe Generale's chief executive, Daniel Bouton, dismissed as "absurd" the notion that the bank's actions helped fuel the turmoil on world markets.
Bouton said Kerviel had been betting throughout 2007 that markets would fall - a winning position. But the trader had overstepped his authority and was wagering much more money than he should have, Bouton said.
So at the beginning of January, Bouton said, the trader voluntarily created losing positions, to neutralize his earlier gains and cover his tracks.
But this month's quickly dropping markets turned "this sad affair ... into a Greek tragedy: His virtual losing position became huge," Bouton was quoted by Le Figaro as saying.
Despite the bank's losses, which Bouton called "enormous and abnormal," he insisted Societe Generale's viability was not at risk.
Experts and others, including France's prime minister, have questioned whether a single futures trader could have managed such large sums. Some have suggested Societe Generale might have used Kerviel as a scapegoat for other losses, like those related to the subprime crisis.
The bank says the scale of the damage was so great only because of the bad timing of the discovery - right before the worst day in world markets since Sept. 11, 2001. It also fired Kerviel's supervisors.
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