The two men were found guilty of illegal conduct at the height of the 2008 financial crisis and were made an example of by prosecutors, with Kerviel’s three-year sentence upheld and Gupta given two years in prison.
Kerviel was also ordered to pay his former employer €4.9bn (£4bn), a fine the bank said it would be “realistic” about claiming back.
The French trader, who has never denied making €50bn in rogue trades which subsequently fell apart during 2008, blamed the culture in his firm and said his bets were placed in the full knowledge of his bosses who turned a blind eye when everything was going well.
But the Parisian prosecutor refused to accept this was the case and found Kerviel solely culpable, naming him “sole creator, inventor and user of a fraudulent system that caused these damages to Societe Generale”.
Meanwhile Gupta, who was found guilty of revealing insider information about the state of Goldman Sachs to hedge fund manager and friend Raj Rajaratnam, was said to have committed “the functional equivalent of stabbing Goldman in the back” and refused a plea for community service.
Instead Judge Jed Rakoff handed him a two-year sentence and $5m (£3.1m) fine and asked "why did Gupta do it?".
