08-02 Contents: Société Générale, Direct Debit Fraud, Spreadsheet safety
ISSN 1649-2374 This issue online at http://www.sysmod.com/praxis/prax0802.htm [Previous] [Index] [Next]
Systems Modelling Ltd.: Managing reality in Information Systems - strategies for success |
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IN THIS ISSUE |
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1) Risk & Security |
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2) Bank Direct Debit fraud |
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3) Spreadsheets |
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4) Off Topic |
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15 Web links in this newsletter |
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About this newsletter and Archives |
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A single story this month, but what a story!
Patrick O'Beirne
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2008 started so well for SocGen, winning the Risk Magazine Awards 2008 for Equity Derivatives House of the Year
http://www.risk.co.uk/public/showPage.html?page=685494
Then on January 24 it emerged that SocGen suffered the biggest rogue trading scandal in history, for which 31-year-old junior trader Jerome Kerviel has been charged. When the bank discovered hidden trades on Jan. 19 and 20, it decided to close the positions in the market quickly. But this coincided with a market rout, and the bank ended up nursing losses of 4.9 billion euros -- close to its net 2006 profit.____________________________________________________________
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Jeremy Clarkson, a particularly outspoken UK TV car show presenter, wrote in a Sunday Times column last year about the HMRC loss of CDs with the personal details of 7 million families: "I have never known such a palaver about nothing. The fact is we happily hand over cheques to all sorts of unsavoury people all day long without a moment's thought. We have nothing to fear." He then printed his bank details to try and make the point that his money would be safe and that the spectre of identity theft was a sham. On Jan 6, he told readers he had opened his bank statement to find a direct debit had been set up in his name to the British Diabetic Association and £500 taken out of his account.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/07/clarkson_bank_prank_backfires/comments/
According to other coverage, this is because the direct debit system transfers the responsibility for checking to the organisation submitting the direct debit, and guarantees that bank clients will be refunded if they claim they were wrongly charged.
The fact is, the information he gave out is on every cheque we sign, and if the shop asks us to write our home address and phone number on the back, we'll do that too. The point is, who has access to the information.
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and John Stokdyk also picked up on it in AccountingWeb:
http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=179069 "Were spreadsheets a vehicle for the Societe Generale fraud?"
Last month, I delivered the first of a new course on spreadsheet safe practices with a certification scheme. This is being given a final shake down now, so we are looking for large companies with serious aims on spreadsheet controls to take part in the final tests of the assessment methods. Contact me, if your organisation is in Ireland or the UK and you feel the need to demonstrate to external auditors or regulators that you're taking a hard-nosed results-based approach to staff awareness training.
http://www.sysmod.com/az.php?a=190540400X&b=Spreadsheet+Check+Control Available worldwide from Amazon.
http://sysmod.buy.ie/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=188 Our offer - free shipping to EU .
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Simply send your comments to FEEDBACK (at) SYSMOD (dot) COM
Thank you! Patrick O'Beirne, Editor
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http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm?catid=3&threadid=58232 reports this link:
http://crookery.blogspot.com/2008/01/astonishing-soc-gen-transcripts-emerge.html
Several Kerviel-dedicated websites have popped up, including www.jeromekerviel.com ; jerome.kerviel.com, and jeromekerviel.net have been cybersquatted. Several video parodies of Société Générale and Kerviel are among the most popular hits on Dalymotion.com, the French video-sharing site.
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