‘Trader justice’: Ex-SocGen trader fired for risky bets claims he was made a ‘scapegoat’

A former Societe Generale trader who was fired for unauthorized risky bets has lambasted the French bank for making him a “scapegoat” and failing to take its share of responsibility for missing the trades.

Kavish Kataria, who was dismissed from the bank’s Delta One desk last year, said the profits and losses on his trades were reported on a daily basis to superiors on his Hong Kong team as well as those in the Paris head office, while a daily email about the transactions was also sent out.

“Instead of taking the responsibility of the lapse in their risk system and not identifying the trades at the right time they fired me and terminated my contract,” Kataria said in a LinkedIn post Thursday.

The comments come after SocGen confirmed earlier this week that Kataria and team head Kevin Ng were dismissed last year after an internal review of their transactions. A SocGen spokesperson declined to comment on the post, but provided a statement on the pair’s dismissal.

“Our strict control framework has allowed us to identify a one-off trading incident in 2023, which didn’t generate any impact and led to appropriate mending measures,” the statement said.

Source: CNBC