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France bank fraud
The man accused of defrauding French bank Societe Generale is now in police custody. CNN's Jim Bittermann reports
Kerviel's lawyer said a couple of days ago that in fact he was not on the run and he was in France, and he would cooperate with police and in fact that's what's happened just in the last few hours here.
He was brought in to the headquarters of the French Financial police, the Financial Brigade, they are the ones who have looked into business matters and he has been undergoing questioning there since although no one really saw him go. he came in a completely anonymous car with the windows blacked-out so it was impossible to see him in the back of the car. But in fact the authorities did confirm that he's in the headquarters of the Financial Brigade and is being questioned right now. Now that questioning could go on for up to 48 hours without any kind of charges being filed and it'll probably take all of that given the complexities of this case.
The Financial police raided Kerviel's apartment the other night and took off computer material, but in an indication that they may be just as interested in what he did as what the bank did. They also have, pulled off a raid on the Societe Generale headquarter's building and have carried off computer tapes and computer data from that raid, so they are looking into this whole thing.
The Finance minister, the French Finance Minister basically is directing this investigation, because she is under orders from the Prime Minister to come up with the facts in this case as quickly as possible. Here is what she had to say.
I've been tasked by my Prime Minister to give him a report within 8 days and I want to focus on 3 things. One is what really happened and I want that chronology of events and recital of facts to be based on actual hard data. I am not going to satisfy myself with allegations, rumors, conspiracy and what have you. I want hard facts.
Second is understand why controls did not work and three, make some recommendations preliminary, I suppose because you know 8 days is a short period of time. About recommendations as to how controls should be improved and what additional controls should be put in place if necessary.
Many financial analysts have suggested that others could have been involved in the losses and up till now, we've only heard the bank's side of the story.
Jim Bittermann,CNN Paris.
