Several alerts by the front office got little attention and less response. Long before Kerviel's activities were unearthed in Jan. 2008, there were several signals that were either simply ignored or not properly responded to. For instance despite the suspiciously high value amount (59 percent of his group's earnings) and growth in Kerviel's declared earnings in 2007, no investigations or analysis was ever done. Similarly, between Dec. 28, 2007 and Jan. 1, 2008 there was an unusually high-level of cash flow for Kerviel's primary operations center where he traded from. But no one noticed. Even two queries related to Kerviel by Europe's Eurex securities exchange, did not receive much attention from Kerviel's direct manager. Neither did two alerts from SocGen's middle office informing Kerviel's manager of anomalies concerning Kerviel that were unearthed during routine reviews.

Kerviel's manager had an overly tolerant attitude toward intraday trading activities. Such trading by Kerviel was "unjustified" given his assignment and lack of seniority as a trader, the report noted. It was this intraday trading that gave Kerviel a context for carrying out his illegal trading activities.

The operations environment was critically chaotic. A "chronically" under-staffed middle office operations group, combined with fast growth, and a rapid multiplication in the number of products contributed to a chaotic operations environment which made it easier for Kerviel to conceal his activities.

In addition, the report indicated that Kerviel may well have had an accomplice in-house—an assistant who helped enter the hinky transactions. Kerviel has said repeatedly that other traders at SocGen followed the same practices, and that he has been made a scapegoat for others' failings in addition to his own.