anatomy of an extraordinary fraud

MAX – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

“Scammer, fraudster, terrorist. » Stunned, looking haggard, as if he was stepping out of a boxing ring, Daniel Bouton, the CEO of Société Générale, does not have words strong enough to describe the author of the fraud who almost brought down his bank. It is January 24, 2008: a 31-year-old trader with no history until then risked 50 billion euros on the financial markets, causing a loss of 4.9 billion for the French bank. His name: Jérôme Kerviel.

Once the effect of astonishment has passed, a question begins to circle: in a universe as controlled as the banking sector, full of computers and algorithms, how could Société Générale have done nothing? see ? Was the trader not encouraged to speculate? The doubt spreads like wildfire until the Kerviel affair becomes a social debate on a financial system gone mad, having made profit at all costs its driving force and its mantra.

Sixteen years after the scandal, for which Jérôme Kerviel was found solely criminally guilty, Fred Garson returns to this extraordinary story in a thriller documentary series, which keeps you in suspense as if you did not know the outcome. From the incredible “unwinding” in seventy-two hours flat of the trader's extravagant positions, to prevent the collapse of Société Générale and, with it, the entire French banking system, to the legal twists and turns, including the funny journey undertaken by Jérôme Kerviel to meet the Pope in Rome and his appeal for help to the French president at the time, a certain François Hollande…

Indelible mark

But more subtly, on the merits of the affair, the strength of the series lies in this two-voiced story, from the epilogue to the denouement with, on one side, the bank and its spin doctors and, on the other , Jérôme Kerviel and his lawyers. Two theses overlap and oppose each other, without the director interrupting or cutting the story of the protagonists of the case, who agreed to express themselves on camera.

This is the whole point of the exercise, this long period of a story collected at a distance from the facts. Indeed, time has done its work, we are no longer in the excess of words spoken in front of the forests of microphones of the time to convince or defame, these shocking and lapidary formulas, necessarily caricatures. The stories are laid back and tell that part of the truth that escapes quickly, that which cannot be judged in court.

What is first striking is the indelible mark that the affair left on them, the faces permanently marked and defeated, the wasted end of Daniel Bouton's career reminiscent of the broken life of Jérôme Kerviel. Then comes the gap in perception of events, between a bank boss who continues to seek a rational logic for his trader's actions and the latter, far removed from the profile of the trader. rogue trader the Wall Street.

From pride to intoxication

The man recounts his provincial origins, his arrival in Paris, which saw him propelled into the holy of holies – the trading room of one of the largest French banks -, his pride when he won his first millions for the benefit of the General. From pride to intoxication, the slide is taking place slowly, Jérôme Kerviel remaining today convinced that he was encouraged to commit ever more money and that he was allowed to do so. Was he not first congratulated by his superiors when he took his first risks?

Bouncing precisely on the idea of ​​a possible fatal spiral – without ever launching into a “trial” in review or rehabilitating the person who admitted to having concealed his positions – the series digs a little deeper. Cautiously, rigorously, with respect for adversarial matters, she questions the speed of the criminal investigation and the power of influence of the banks, returns to these witnesses who made a dissonant voice heard, victims of a discrediting campaign and this report disturbing revealed by Mediapart which could well have restarted the affair…

“The affair revealed the methods that can exist in finance”will say François Hollande without commenting further, in a testimony which deserves to be listened to.

Ultimately, all of Fred Garson's talent here lies in not locking the viewer into a binary or fixed reading of the affair. It is up to him to judge whether the Kerviel affair is also the story of a system which gave birth to a “monster”.