Rogue trader Jerome Kerviel gets five years

Former Societe Generale trader Jerome Kerviel has been sentenced to five years in prison, including two years suspended, for his role in a trading scandal that cost the bank close to 5 billion euros (£4.4 billion).

A Paris court also ordered 33-year-old Kerviel to reimburse the French bank 4.9 billion euros lost in unauthorised trades which brought SocGen to the brink of collapse in 2008.

The 33-year-old ex-trader, who now works for a technology consultancy, was found guilty of charges breach of trust, computer abuse and forgery.

At the end of Kerviel's high-profile three-week trial in June, his defence team pleaded guilty to computer abuse but rejected the other charges.

The public prosecutor has recommended Kerviel serve at least four years behind bars, with a fifth year suspended.

The verdict is critical for SocGen, which has worked hard to clean up its image and tighten risk controls since the scandal broke. The bank says Kerviel acted alone and egregiously in taking unauthorised positions worth 50 billion euros that cost 4.9 billion to unwind.

Kerviel does not deny he took risky bets and lied to cover them up but claims his superiors knew what he was doing. During his three-week trial in June his lawyers cast him as an innocent pawn, corrupted and goaded by a bank that was hooked on risk.

The ex-head of Societe Generale, Daniel Bouton, who stepped down in 2009 in the face of public criticism, told the courtroom Kerviel was an "evil genius" well-versed in backroom operations and trade risk controls who would have cracked even the toughest security mechanism.

He did admit there were weaknesses in the bank's risk controls at the time, for which it was fined 4 million euros in 2008 by French banking regulators.

Kerviel, however, said he had been encouraged by his bosses and was trying to make money for the bank, even if he did acknowledge having gone too far and made "errors".