Moussa Bakir a broker at Fimat (now NewEdge), a subsidiary of Societe Generale, appeared before French Judges on Saturday based on the suspicion that he may have had advance knowledge of Jerome Kerviel's illicit trades.

Bakir had been held - and one imagines, sweated - for the preceding 48 hours. While Bakir doesn't appear to have revealed anything of substance during his conversation with authorities, he has been named an assisted witness, basically somewhere between assisting authorities and being prosecuted by them.

Bakir's name came to the attention of investigators based on instance message files recovered from Kerviel's computer (he was also one of Kerviel's Facebook friends). Some 2000 Kerviel IMs were leaked to leaked to Nouvel Observateur magazine.

Kerviel's legal team have dismissed the Bakir instant messages as "irrelevant." Here's an example of one the irrelevant exchanges (one of many appearing in the FT):

October 11 - Kerviel writes: “You haven’t said anything about our trades? If so, I’ll smash your face in.” Bakir replies: “Woa. You’re mad. It’s between you and me.”

Yep...completely unrelated to the charges at hand.

Kerviel, for his part, had also been released days ago but was picked up again by authorities and is currently in custody. The emergence of other potential players in the fraud and potential contact between them found authorities revising their determination that Kerviel could be trusted on his own recognizance.

-- MDT

Labels: Jerome Kerviel, Jerome Khttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giferveil, Moussa Bakir, Societe Generale