PARIS, Dec 20: The US financier George Soros was convicted of insider trading by a French court on Friday and ordered to pay a 2.2 million dollar fine for his role in the failed takeover of a French bank 14 years ago.

The 72-year-old billionaire and philanthropist, whose trial took place in Paris last month, was found guilty of using privileged information to speculate in shares of Societe Generale in a 1988 government-backed bid to wrest control of the bank’s board.

Two co-accused, Lebanese financier and middleman Samir Traboulsi, 64, and businessman Jean-Charles Naouri, 53, were acquitted. The case of a fourth man, Jean-Pierre Peyraud, 88, was separated at the start of the trial because of his advanced age.

Soros, who was in New York when the verdict was read out, immediately said he would appeal against his conviction.

“I am astounded and dismayed by the court’s ruling. I will appeal the decision to the highest level necessary,” he said in a statement issued by his office.

“Let me repeat now what I have maintained from the start: at no point was I in possession of inside information regarding Societe Generale. The charges against me are unfounded and without merit,” he said.

The four men were alleged to have been contacted by an investment banker, Georges Pebereau, who was putting together a consortium to buy up Societe Generale shares with the approval of the Socialist government of the time.

Though none of the accused joined the scheme, they were said to have illegally used their knowledge of the planned takeover to speculate in the stock. Prosecutors said Soros’s fine was equivalent to the amount of money he made out of the trading.

“Mr Soros was well informed on the target and the means for carrying out this operation, as well as its scope, the principal investors and the hoarding of stocks — all of which explains the moves in the share price,” Judge Sophie Foncelle said in her ruling.

The Societe Generale affair was widely cited as evidence of a climate of illicit collusion linking the worlds of politics, business and high finance under Francois Mitterrand, France’s Socialist president from 1981 to 1995.

Right-wing finance minister Edouard Balladur privatized the bank in 1987, but when a Socialist government was elected the following year, there was a concerted effort to take back control, and Pebereau agreed to launch a takeover bid.

His consortium acquired 10 percent of Societe Generale’s capital, but its attempt to take over the board collapsed in 1989. The operation itself was not illegal, and no charges against Pebereau were ever brought.

Though the French courts have a reputation for the slowness of their proceedings, the 14 year gap since the offense took place was exceptional and the defence said it made a proper trial impossible because many players have since died.

The judge said it was “undeniable that the length of this case is unacceptable... but that does not render it invalid.”

A Hungarian who fled his country during the 1956 uprising against Communist rule, Soros made his estimated four billion dollar fortune speculating on the financial markets — famously hastening the collapse of sterling during Britain’s 1992 crisis over participation in European monetary union.

In recent years he has delegated management of his Quantum Fund to concentrate on his philanthropic foundations which function in 30 countries around the world with the self-proclaimed goal of “transforming closed societies into open ones.”

In books and articles he has shown himself disenchanted with the world’s existing financial systems, which he calls “dehumanizing”, and has come out in support of the so-called Tobin tax on international capital transfers in order to pay for development in poorer countries.—AFP