By Lionel Laurent
PARIS (Reuters) - Jerome Kerviel put Societe Generale in danger by building up unauthorised trading positions at the French bank, a former trader colleague told a Paris court on Thursday.
Kerviel's positions, which Societe Generale blames for a 4.9 billion euros (4 billion pound) trading loss in early 2008, were described as "stratospheric" and "abnormal" by witness Selim Nemouchi on the third day of Kerviel's long-awaited trial.
Nemouchi, who still works at SocGen, told the courtroom in the Palais de Justice he was disappointed by Kerviel's breaches of the desk's trading limits, which Kerviel has argued were tolerated by superiors.
"We are fighting day after day to make the bank a bit of money... I'm disappointed," said Nemouchi.
Kerviel's lawyer hit back at Nemouchi by asking him whether Societe Generale could have acted earlier and avoided the losses if it had talked with Kerviel over an "exceptional" gain of 1.5 billion euros at the end of 2007.
"It's a possibility," said Nemouchi.
Kerviel has been presented by his defence team as a pawn for profit who worked in an environment where there were holes in the risk controls. SocGen insists Kerviel acted alone and has denied tacit complicity.
SocGen Deputy Operational Risk Officer Claire Dumas told the court on Wednesday that Kerviel actively covered his tracks in the computer system designed to monitor trading positions.
She told the court: "The bank is not a casino. We do not give a trader 30 billion euros, 20 billion or 50 billion."
Although she confirmed the bank did not monitor trading limits in nominal terms, she said this was standard practice in the industry and that Kerviel used fictitious positions to hoodwink other risk controls.
Kerviel faces five years in jail and a 375,000 euro fine if found guilty of charges of breach of trust, computer abuse and forgery. His trial began on Tuesday amid a media frenzy over one of the most famous faces of the financial crisis in France.
Kerviel has told the court his desk's trading limit of 125 million euros was seen as "porous" and was regularly exceeded by him and his fellow traders.
SocGen's former head of investment banking, Jean-Pierre Mustier, told the court Kerviel "lied" to him and said that traders were encouraged not to take risks but to "know how" to take risks.
(Editing by Mike Nesbit)