Police have taken into custody the trader blamed for a 4.9 billion euros (US$7 billion) fraud at French bank Societe Generale, a judicial source said yesterday.
The source said Jerome Kerviel, 31, was being held for questioning.
Under French law, suspects can be held for an initial 24-hour period before any charges are pressed, but this can be extended.
Police nabbed Kerviel from his vehicle in the underground car park of the financial brigade's offices in Paris, a source close to the investigation said.
He was taken to a police station in Paris at about 2pm.
The detention followed a police raid on Kerviel's apartment on Friday in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly sur Seine, during which documents were seized.
Police officers also went on Friday to the bank's Paris headquarters to seize Kerviel's computer files, prosecutors said, adding that "some items useful to the inquiry" were handed over voluntarily.
In an interview published yesterday in the daily Le Figaro, Societe Generale chairman Daniel Bouton denied that the bank's management had made any strategic errors which led to the scandal.
"What happened at Societe Generale is certainly not a disaster that resulted from our strategy. It is more like an accidental fire which destroys a large factory at an industrial plant," Bouton said.
He also rejected any suggestion that the bank had sought to hide the losses.
US media suggested the trader may have helped push the US Federal Reserve into an unprecedented rate cut on Tuesday.
"Was the Fed tricked?" wrote Wall Street Journal commentator David Gaffen, asking whether Societe Generale's high-volume sales of tainted positions at the start of the week -- when global stock markets were in turmoil -- helped set the stage for the emergency cut of 0.75 percentage point.
Bouton rejected the proposition as "absurd," arguing that it was Asian bourses which had "set the tone" for falls on financial markets and the Fed decision.
Within a day of Societe Generale's announcement, France's "rogue trader" had become a cult figure on the Internet, his photograph plastered over newspaper front pages around the globe.
Described by work colleagues as a shy, hesitant character, Kerviel's resume depicts him as a judo and sailing fan who once ran for municipal office in his hometown of Pont l'Abbe in Brittany, western France.
His aunt, who lives in Pont-l'Abbe, said that her nephew "must have been manipulated."
"They are an honest family, who have nothing to reproach themselves for. The young man has always been serious, reserved," Sylviane Le Goff said.
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