Heads are likely to roll high in the French financial establishment after it emerged yesterday that President Sarkozy was kept in the dark for three days over the €5 billion (£3.7 billion) fraud by a rogue trader at the Société Générale bank.

The wrath of the President, who was apparently told only on Wednesday of trouble at SocGen, added to widespread suspicion that France’s second bank and the Banque de France were too eager to blame Jérôme Kerviel, the solitary trader.

As well as Daniel Bouton, SocGen’s chief executive, Christian Noyer, the governor of the central bank, is among those in the line of fire.

For a year, Mr Kerviel, 31, a junior operator, was said by the bank to have made bets worth up to €50 billion — more than the bank’s worth — on future movements of European stock markets without the knowledge of his superiors. The Prime Minister, François Fillon, and one of Mr Sarkozy’s chief advisers yesterday voiced doubts about this explanation.

“The Five Billion Dollar Man”, as Mr Kerviel has been dubbed, remained in hiding while police began an inquiry. Paris prosecutors said that they first had to decide whether there was a criminal case since they had only SocGen’s version. Mr Kerviel’s lawyer said that he was ready to co-operate with investigators.

Some experts said that France could even face action from the US Federal Reserve, because the Banque de France was complicit in SocGen’s secret operation to close off liabilities worth €30-€50 billion. American sources suggested that although technically possible, this was unlikely.

The three-day sell-off of losing futures bets on European stock market indices may have helped to trigger the market slide on Monday. This caused the Fed to rush in with an emergency drop in interest rates.

The shame of history’s biggest trader loss clouded the start of a state visit to India by Mr Sarkozy. The President played down the affair as a “large-scale internal fraud”. However, aides confirmed that Mr Sarkozy was furious that the Government had been told after the event of a crisis that would shake the world’s trust in Paris.

Mr Noyer had been handling the crisis since early on Sunday, along with Mr Bouton. The Prime Minister added his voice to the chorus of disbelief over the bank’s story of the rogue trader. “It is difficult for each one of us to understand how a single person can, in a relatively short time, inflict such considerable losses in a banking establishment that is moreover serious and solid,” he said.

Mr Noyer and Mr Bouton, both 57, are old colleagues as graduates of the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). Mr Sarkozy, a lawyer, distrusts and is distrusted by les énarques, as ENA graduates are known.

Mr Noyer, who served as France’s first governor of the European Central Bank, is thought to be vulnerable. Mr Bouton’s survival in his post was depicted by media commentators yesterday as an embarrassment. Mr Bouton offered his resignation but was asked by his board to stay on. In newspaper advertisements yesterday he said to shareholders: “I understand your disappointment, your anger. This situation is perfectly unacceptable.”

Le Monde contrasted what it depicted as the complacency of the French banking world with the rigorous culture of the City of London. “In London or Wall Street this affair would have been unthinkable. In Paris, they don’t like written procedures,” a senior French banker told the newspaper.

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