Loading ...Christine Lagarde: IMF chief convicted over payout
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20 December 2016
- From the section Europe
A French court has found International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde guilty of negligence but did not hand down any punishment.
As French finance minister in 2008, she approved an award of €404m ($429m; £340m) to businessman Bernard Tapie for the disputed sale of a firm.
Ms Lagarde, who always denied wrongdoing, was not present in court, having left Paris for Washington DC.
The IMF board said it retained “full confidence” in her leadership.
She said she would not appeal against the ruling: “There’s a point in time when one has to just stop, turn the page and move on and continue to work with those who have put their trust in me.”
The French government also confirmed its confidence in Ms Lagarde, who was reappointed to a five-year term at the IMF in February.
On Friday, she told the trial she had always acted in good faith and the suspicion she had lived under for the past five years had been an “ordeal”.
Cases at the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) may not be retried but can be appealed against on grounds of procedural errors.
Ms Lagarde’s lawyer said his team would consider appealing, Reuters reported.
‘Complicated and strange’
Ms Lagarde, 60, was tried on charges of “negligence by a person in position of public authority”.
Accused of allowing the misuse of public funds, rather than actual corruption, she could potentially have been sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of €15,000, but escaped a sentence and emerges from the trial without a criminal record.
Explaining the verdict, which took many by surprise, Judge Martine Ract Madoux said: “The context of the global financial crisis in which Madame Lagarde found herself in should be taken into account.”