How hard do French labor laws make it for businesses to fire somebody? Well, apparently you can cost your employer $7.2 billion and still not get sacked.

That is the situation that the bank Société Générale faces with employee Jerome Kerivel, 31, more than a week after it announced that his unauthorized trades had cost the bank billions:

Société Générale has stopped paying Mr. Kerviel and told him not to come to the office, but it hasn’t managed to formally fire him. French law stipulates that to do that, the bank must first call him in for a sit-down meeting and explain its dissatisfaction. He has the right to bring along a trade-union official, a lawyer or anyone else he’d like.

That will be complicated: A pair of Paris judges this week released Mr. Kerviel from custody but forbade him to have contact with the bank. “This is a very peculiar case,” says Emmanuel Dockès, a law professor at l’Université Lyon 2, Mr. Kerviel’s alma mater in central France.

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Firing has never been easy in France, where on-the-spot dismissals à l’américaine are viewed as brutal and very un-French. “This is not like America or England. We have rules that protect employees, no matter what they do wrong,” says Stéphane Boudin, a Paris lawyer specializing in labor disputes.

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Last week, when Société Générale disclosed its trading debacle, getting rid of Mr. Kerviel seemed a forgone conclusion.

Daniel Bouton, the bank’s chairman and CEO, issued an English-language statement, announcing that the “individual in question has been dismissed.” But that turned out to be a translation error. The French original said that he had been “mis à pied,” which translates literally as “put on foot,” but basically means to be suspended or asked to go home.

“They can’t just tell him to take his bags and get lost,” says Michel Origier, a trade-union representative at the French bank where Mr. Kerviel worked — and, technically at least, still works.

Read the whole thing here.

To illustrate this point, France is one of the few countries that does not have a local version of the Donald Trump TV show “The Apprentice.” The concept of a boss shouting, “You’re fired! Clean out your desk!” is unknown to the French people.

By the way, Kerviel’s own lawyer is complaining about the situation. It is unfair to her client because the legal limbo he is in makes it impossible for him to collect unemployment.

As if all of this Guallic goofiness were not enough, Kerivel’s become something of a folk hero to his countrymen:

Reviled by Société Générale as a malevolent fraudster and “mutating virus,” Mr. Kerviel, 31 years old, is now being hailed by a growing band of fans as “Robin Hood,” “the Che Guevara of Finance” and even a genius worthy of the Nobel Prize in economics.

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Mr. Kerviel’s biggest fan base is at home in France, which often has a soft spot for cheeky rogues, particularly when their victims are well-to-do.

Mr. Rocancourt, the former Rockefeller impostor, has written three books about his exploits and says his own life story is being made into a movie. After doing jail time in the U.S. and Canada, he now lives in Paris with a former Miss France.

Mr. Rocancourt urges Mr. Kerviel to take full advantage of his current notoriety. “People always like a Robin Hood, a guy who steals from the rich.”

Hmmm, so he is the Che Guevara of France? Does that mean he’s going to execute 400 political prisoners?

* The saying is a quote by Charles de Gaulle.