Hometown Boys: Tiny French Ville Drawn Into Scandal

Hometown Boys: Tiny French Ville Drawn Into Scandal

Alleged rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel and his older brother grew up on a quiet cul-de-sac near rocky potato fields. Their mother cut hair in a low-rent beauty salon off a parking lot; their father hammered metal into bed frames in a cinder-block workshop.

The last time anything really exciting happened in this windswept, coastal corner of northwestern France was back in 1961, when local potato farmers angry at slumping prices went on a violent rampage. The brothers missed that. Jerome was born in 1977; his brother, Olivier, seven years earlier.

"This place, if you have dreams, you leave when you're 18 and come back when you're 60," says Danielle Lautrédou, a member of the local council.

The brothers Kerviel left town to pursue their careers. And Pont l'Abbé -- along with their employers and financial markets around the world -- is now struggling to fathom what its native sons have been up to since.

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