Checks by SocGen missed bet

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Prosecutors said the trader, 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel, would remain in custody until Monday after handing himself in on Saturday and was co-operating with a probe into how the bank racked up $7 billion losses on alleged illicit deals.

Kerviel's new lawyer said he had been doing a trader's job by taking on risk and accused the bank of setting him up for a public "lynching" by letting him carry all the blame.

"He has not embezzled anyone, he hasn't taken a cent for himself and he was just doing his job as best he could," Christian Charriere-Bournazel told Reuters.

Three days after stunning world finance with news that a lone, lowly trader had punched a hole in its compliance systems and forced the bank to seek a lifeline of new capital, SocGen set out in detail how it says he took dizzying risks undetected.

Like rogue trader Nick Leeson who sank Britain's Barings bank in 1995, the picture that emerged from Kerviel's employer on Sunday was of a young man trained by his own bank to detect fraud and then using these skills to work round controls as a trader.

Both tried to cover up for bad trading decisions by doubling their bets and waiting for the market to turn in their favour.

The similarities do not end there. Both were involved in arbitrage - taking advantage of price differences between markets - on stock index futures and covered their tracks by juggling real deals against fake ones with fictitious people, according to the results of a forensic data search at SocGen.

The bank says it remains baffled as to why one of its more junior trading staff put his career and the bank at risk.

"We don't know, we don't understand and it will be for the legal inquiry to find out," corporate and investment banking chief Jean-Pierre Mustier said.

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