Rogue French trader Jerome Kerviel becomes cartoon strip star

London, Aug 8 : Jerome Kerviel, the rogue trader who has been charged in the January 2008 Societe Generale trading loss incident, is set to become the star of a cartoon strip.

Called "The Diary of Jerome Kerviel", the book will cover Kerviel's journey of seven years, right from when he joined a bank in Paris in 2001 to his imprisonment in January on charges of forgery and breach of trust.

The book will be published in France next month.

"I was totally flabbergasted when I read that he'd been able to bet 50 billion euros of the bank's money. It was just incomprehensible," The Telegraph quoted Xavier Thomas, of the publishers Thomas Editions, as saying.

He added: "So we decided to do a 'bande dessinee' (cartoon book) that explores the absurdity of it all . Kerviel is not a hero nor a villain. He's just emblematic of a system."

The book will be based on transcripts of police interviews and Kerviel's own experience, and portrays him as an outsider in the arrogant world of the trading floor where his colleagues all have backgrounds in the elite grandes ecoles.

"Early on in the book he is given a trading job, but the amounts at stake are so small that he feels he can't show the bank how good he is. That's where it all starts. And he's astonished to see how easy it is to bypass the controls," said Thomas.

The 40-page cartoon book, with drawings by Nicolas Million, will hit the shelves on September 8.

Also, Thomas has been contacted by an American publisher for buying English language rights.

ANI