Daniel Bouton is rightly being spanked, but not necessarily for the correct reasons. The chief executive of Société Générale deserves to come under the most intense interrogation in the wake of the world's biggest rogue trader scandal, but first it is only fair to clear up where he is not culpable.

For a start, he should not be blamed for the blow-out in the size of the loss. When SocGen's senior management first discovered the black hole ten days ago, it stood at less than €2 billion (£1.5 billion). By the time that it was completely closed out last Wednesday it had mushroomed to almost €5 billion.

Some ill-informed comment has suggested that this was the bank's fault, that somehow it continued to gamble recklessly in the hope of reversing the loss. This is to misunderstand the nature of Jérôme Kerviel's bets. They weren't in the past; they were open-ended and the potential profit/loss was changing every minute that European stock markets were open.

Faced with a time-bomb capable of blowing France's second-biggest bank into oblivion, Mr Bouton had no choice but to close out the positions as quickly as possible. The risk of keeping them open in the hope of a pick-up in markets was too horrendous to contemplate. It was just bad luck that stock market conditions were so adverse.

Secondly, he should not be attacked for keeping the scandal secret for a few days. To admit to a €50 billion exposure last Monday would have been to commit corporate suicide, as every trader in the market would have moved prices against him, making the extrication process even more difficult. There might even have been a run on the bank by anxious depositors. French shareholder groups complaining that they weren't kept properly informed should be grateful. Their losses might otherwise have been greater still.

As it was, too many people in high places knew about the problem by Monday morning. With hindsight, insider-dealing looks a more plausible explanation for the meltdown in markets that day than the lame explanation that all of a sudden everyone was much more worried about a US recession.

With the rogue positions now closed, however, shareholders and regulators deserve much more candour on what happened and how. With every passing utterance by Paris prosecutors yesterday, SocGen's version of events was looking more partial. Here are ten questions Mr Bouton needs to answer.

1. Mr Kerviel was promoted from the back office, where he learnt about risk controls, to front office, where he traded. Was any note put on his file alerting his managers to the increased potential for abuse from this leap across a Chinese wall?

2. How many times were warning bells raised about Mr Kerviel before disaster struck? We know there were several close shaves, which each time he brushed off with a forgery or claims of a mistake. Why was there not a zero tolerance policy when so much was at risk?

3. Mr Kerviel allegedly used the log-ins and passwords of colleagues to enter transactions on to the computer to cover his tracks. How could procedures have been so lax as to allow this?

4. Mr Kerviel was allegedly able to wipe fictitious positions from bank computers ahead of supervisory checks and then re-enter them immediately after. Why weren't checks done to outwit this ruse?

5. SocGen claims that Mr Kerviel's choice of bets did not trigger margin calls, demands for cash that unmask many a fraud. What alternative safeguards, if any, were put in place given this apparent danger?

6. Mr Kerviel is said to have made substantial money for the bank with his earlier bets last year. Why was there no investigation into how he could have made such substantial sums from the low-margin arbitrage he was supposed to be confined to?

7. What did SocGen know before Friday, January 18? “Abnormal counter-party risk”... was... “detected several days earlier”, according to SocGen's written explanation. In the first chaotic news conference last Thursday, Mr Bouton mentioned a “fishy” trade made in December.

8. “Four or five” managers have been sacked, according to Mr Bouton. Why, unless there were serious lapses in controls higher up the SocGen hierarchy?

9. Mr Kerviel was given trading limits on his net position, but not apparently on his gross position. In other words, he could amass huge long bets so long as he exactly matched them with short wagers. Wasn't this an unacceptable risk because of timing issues and counterparty risk?

10. In the space of four years at SocGen, investment banking profits rocketed fivefold, while equity derivatives revenues mushroomed. What efforts were made to ensure risk-control procedures were keeping up with this breakneck pace?

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