Meet Jerome Kerviel, The World’s Poorest Man With a Huge Debt In His Journal

The parameters for poverty are usually defined by the lack of a roof over one’s head and the inability to afford three meals a day. According to the World Bank, as of March this year, the global poverty rate is 46.9 %. However, did you know that the poorest man in the world lived a luxurious life that most common men could not afford? Sounds downright crazy right? That is because in this case the level of poverty has been deciphered on account of the amount of debt he has, and it’s huge.

The mantle of the poorest man on earth has been given to French citizen Jerome Kerviel. One of the biggest banks in Europe, Société Générale, once employed Kerviel. Jerome is a computer prodigy and holds a master’s degree in finance. Jerome has a debt of Rs 495,068,952,000. This is the highest amount of debt any individual owes to third parties and hence Jerome is often called the poorest man on earth.

Jerome was born in Pont-al-Abe, France. His mother worked as a hairdresser, and his father was a blacksmith. He graduated with a master’s in finance from Lyon’s Lumiere University. After finishing his education, he began working at Société Générale Bank of France as a junior derivatives trader. He was assigned to the Delta One division, which trades equity derivatives, algorithmic trading, exchanges, ETFs, and software investments. He used to receive a salary of Rs 5,449,798 here.

Jerome yearned to be wealthy. He had extensive computer knowledge. He was eclipsed by his talent. Jerome began arbitrage trading using company funds, taking advantage of system weaknesses, although the company remained unaware of this He initially made a lot of money doing this. He made an estimated $73 billion in trading in a year. His forgery was discovered by the Société Générale on January 19, 2008.

Due to Jerome’s manipulation of the bank’s funds during the year, Société Générale suffered a loss of 7.2 billion dollars. In 2008, Jerome was accused of forgery, breach of trust, and unauthorized computer use. Jerome was deeply in debt at the time his scheme was discovered. He owed $6.3 billion in debt. Jerome was sentenced to 3 years in the year 2015. He has now come out of prison after serving his sentence and is trying to get his life back on track but the debt remains.