That’s some obligation – it will take 180,000 years to repay it…
Yesterday, the so called “Rogue Trader”, Jerome Kerviel, whose unauthorised trades cost his former employer Societe Generale vast losses was sentenced.
Whilst this has got a serious element to it (he was jailed for 5 years) it also has a certain element of farce. As well as the jail sentence he was ordered to pay compensation to his former employer.
Now, this wasn’t any “normal” compensation we’re talking about here. It was the princely sum of €4.9 billion. Yes, Mr Kerviel was told that he has to pay nearly €5,000,000,000 to his former employer.
Based on his annual earnings before going to jail it would take him nearly 180,000 years to pay that amount! Societe Generale have sensibly announced that they will not be pursuing the money.
Control environments don’t generally strike students as the most scintillating area of their studies. A number of ACCA and CIMA Papers however place considerable emphasis on controls, using Sarbanes-Oxley and the COSO frameworks.
Respecting controls might slow down an employee’s daily work routine and may feel sometimes like a constraint on innovation and enterprise. Sometimes, it may be tempting to circumvent controls, especially if it generally appears to result in making quicker profits.
Anybody tempted to do this might be interested to note the Paris court’s decision to sentence Mr Kervie. Although the hapless gentleman alleged that the bank had been complicit in allowing him to trade beyond his authority limits, this seemed to be little defence in either showing innocence or getting a more lenient sentence.
The lesson seems to be fairly clear. Even if the tone appears to be one of disregarding controls because management don’t take them seriously, if anything then goes wrong, management will most probably not agree that controls were considered to be unimportant!
The safest thing to do is to assume that any controls are meant to be respected, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
It could literally be your “get out of jail” card.
