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Who Is The Poorest Person In The World?

author-img By Ankita Tripathy 5 Mins Read June 12, 2023 Last Updated on: August 30th, 2023

who is the poorest person in the world

While we all know who is the richest person in the world, not a lot of people know the answer to who is the poorest person in the world. When you question about being poor, you have to check the consensus of underdeveloped countries in the world to learn the answer to this question.

If you are someone who is among the few curious-minded people and wants to know the name of the poorest person in this world, you will find this article to be of help. In this blog, I will be focusing on the life and other information about the person that you are looking for.

Keep reading this article till the end to learn more…

Who Is The Poorest Person In The World?

While we all know the name of the wealthiest man in the world, not a lot of people usually search for the name of the poorest man. We get to read tons and tons of articles on what Elon Musk, the former richest person, and Arnold Bernault, the present richest in the world, do and how they became rich. But have you ever considered who the poorest person in the world is? Or about how did the man become so?

In this article, we will be focusing on how much debt can a person take and their inablity to clear their debt leads to the tag of the poorest person in the world. Currently the most indebted man in the wrold will be highlighted in this article.

If you are looking for the name of the poorest man in the world, you are going to find it here. For starters, the name of the poorest person in the world is Jerome Kerviel. He is a rogue trader who hails from France.

Want to know more about him and how he became the poorest person in the world? Well, all you need to do is keep reading this article till the end…

Jerome Kerviel: Wiki/Biography

NameJerome Kerviel
Known ByJerome Kerviel, poorest man in the world
Date Of Birth11 January 1977
AgeForty-five years (45 years)
Place Of BirthPont-l’Abbé, France
NationalityFrench
Name Of FatherCharles
Name Of MotherMarie-Josée
SiblingOliver 
EducationLumière University Lyon 2 (Master’s Degree in Finance),University of Nantes (Bachelor’s Degree in Finance)
ProfessionTrader
Marital StatusDivorced

Jerome Kerviel: Who Is He?

Jerome Kerviel, also known as the poorest man in the world, is a rogue trader from France. In the year 2008, he was convicted for the trading loss of Société Générale, the French bank.

He was born in Pont-l’Abbé, France, and comes from a very humble family, with his mother being a retired hairdresser and his father a blacksmith. Kerviel graduated with a Master’s Degree in Finance in the year 2000.

Even though he is now out of jail after serving a period of three years, he is in debt of nearly five billion euros. This forty-five-year-old man had joined Société Générale in 2000 at the age of twenty-three. And after gathering all the knowledge and learning about the ways in which the bank worked, he decided to use the bank’s computers for unauthorized trading.

So, how did he manage to become the poorest person in the world? Keep reading till the end to learn more…

How Did Jerome Kerviel Become The Poorest Person In The World?

Jerome Kerviel was very well versed with the working of SocGen after working there for several years. And that is the reason why he knew almost everything about the policies that the company had for regulating the trades among its brokers.

His fraud started as early as 2006 when he was creating losing trades! With this fake trading, he was trying to cover his gains and wins initially. The issue was that the trading increased gradually in scale and frequency highlighting him in front of the authorities.

Taking advantage of the policies, he started betting while creating fake trades. While these trades did him profit initially, he was scared of the success. He feared that the bank would discover the forgery and sue him. The reason why the issue was highlighted was because the amount covered by Kerviel was the highest.

In order to cover up for the criminal activities, which included unauthorized transactions for about seventy-three billion dollars, he tried to generate losses for the bank. According to Business Insider, “Kerviel was betting on markets going higher, despite the fact that the subprime mortgage crisis was just beginning. Global markets were looking wobbly and astute traders were going short, or betting on markets going down – the opposite of what Kerviel was doing.”

When the compliance officer working at the bank discovered that a trade had exceeded the “bank’s risk threshold,” he realized that there was no such trade that existed at that moment.

With a thorough investigation, the news and other details about Kerviel’s illegal actions leaked out. According to reports, it was figured that “Jerome Kerviel had lost SocGen US$7.2 billion, making him the worst rogue trader in history, at least in terms of money lost.”

What he tried to inform when he was caught? He informed me that the bank knew about his deals and did not say anything or do anything to stop the deals. It was finally highlighted when the trades became unprofitable.

Once these issues came out, it was observed that a lot of managers of the bank did know about these tradings. People developed knowledge regarding the fraud trading leading to several people resigning from the bank!

What Are The Charges Against Jerome Kerviel?

Jerome Kerviel was charged with illegal and unauthorized trading. Even though many people thought that he was on the run, Jerome’s lawyers stated that he was in Paris. He handed himself to the officers of the French authority, and that is how the legal repercussions started in the year 2008.

When you question, who is the poorest person in the world? We are highlighting Jerome Kerviel because he has the biggest debt in the world. There are many poor people around the world who are submerged in poverty however, it is debt that makes a person more poor.

According to CNN, he was charged with “abuse of confidence” in January 2008. The report also stated, “The abuse of confidence charge could bring a maximum sentence of three years in prison, lawyers have said because it is a non-aggravated charge. Had the charge been aggravated, it would have brought a maximum of seven years behind bars.”

While his trial began in 2010, and he was initially sentenced to a term of five years, he only served in jail for three years. According to The Telegraph, “the Paris appeals court ruled this afternoon that Mr Kerviel was a fraudster rather than the victim of a greedy system as he had claimed all along.”

The court had ordered Kerviel to reimburse the entire sum of 4.9 billion euros to the Société Générale. However, in the year 2016, he won his claims against SocGen’s unfair dismissal.

Read More: Who Is The Cutest Person In The World?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Now that you know the answer to “who is the poorest person in the world,” it is time for you to know about some of the questions that readers frequently ask about him. So, leave this part of the blog before you leave.

1. Which Is The Poorest Country In The World?

According to statistics, Burundi, which is known as The Republic of Burundi, is the poorest country in the world. It is located in Africa and has the lowest per capita income with a GDP of $308.

2. Who Is The Richest Person In The World?

Literally everybody knows his name— Elon Musk. Musk is the CEO and founder of Tesla and SpaceX. He is also the CEO of Twitter and is the richest person in the world and has a net worth of $226.4 billion.

3. Who Is The Richest Woman In The World?

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the richest woman in the world.  She has a net worth of $94 billion. A major part of her wealth comes from her daily’s share in L’Oreal.

Wrapping It Up!

The name of the poorest man in the world is Jerome Kerviel. He is a French rogue trader. Currently, he is in debt of nearly fifty billion euros. He was sentenced to three years in prison in the year 2015.

In case you were in search of the answer to who is the poorest person in the world, I hope that you found this article to be helpful. If there is any other query that you might have regarding the poorest man on earth, please feel free to ask me.

All you need to do is comment in the box at the bottom of the page. And I will be there to answer them!

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Ankita Tripathy

Ankita Tripathy loves to write about food and the Hallyu Wave in particular. During her free time, she enjoys looking at the sky or reading books while sipping a cup of hot coffee. Her favourite niches are food, music, lifestyle, travel, and Korean Pop music and drama.

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