Losing 3.5 billion pounds in seconds was like playing a video game: Rogue trader

Paris, Jan.23 (ANI): A rogue trader who is said to have lost the French bank Société Générale 3.5 billion pounds, has revealed how gambling millions on the stock market felt like "playing a video game".

High-stakes broker, Jérôme Kerviel, 32, confessed he "lost all sense of reality" as he amassed the biggest trading losses in financial history in his Paris dealing room.

The Times quoted him as saying: "Making a million euros in a single day was nothing to me. I stopped recognizing the vast sums I was dealing with and started taking insane risks. And sometimes when I made enormous amounts of money, it gave me an almost orgasmic pleasure."

In 2007, he earned 1.3 billion pounds for the bank, but his luck changed dramatically for the worse in 2008.

Kerviel, who was sacked after his vast losses were exposed in January last year, also revealed how he "made a stock-market killing" out of London's terrorist bombings on July 7, 2005.

He told how, days before the attacks, he gambled that the share price of Allianz, the global insurance giant, would tumble.

He told Le Parisien newspaper that Société Générale also "made a fortune" on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. He said: "I heard it was the best day's trading in the bank's history... apparently the gains were colossal."

Kerviel is facing charges of breach of trust, fabricating documents and illegally accessing computers, and faces three years in prison and a 300,000-pound fine.

He insists he never personally benefited from the crimes he is accused of. Kerviel's trial is not due to begin until the end of the year. (ANI)