The head of the IMF (and the fifth most powerful woman in the world according to Forbes), Christine Lagarde, will stand trial in France. She is accused of negligence, due to a 404 million Euro payment to a businessman in 2008.
She was finance minister to President Nicolas Sarkozy at the time of the payment.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency was marred by numerous scandals; for example an accountant for France’s richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, alleged that she had given an illegal cash donation to Sarkozy’s campaign- via an envelope stuffed with 150,000 Euros.
The businessman in question is Bernard Tapie, a disgraced tycoon who had sold his majority share of Adidas in 1983 in order to become a cabinet minister. He later sued credit Lyonnais bank, which was a state-owned bank at the time, alleging that it had deliberately undervalued the company.
Tapie is best known for bribing opponents of his football club to lose, and served 8 months in prison as a result.
Sarkozy’s government decided to end his court battle, choosing private arbitration in 2008. Ms Lagarde would refer the case to a three-member arbitration panel which awarded the 404 million dollar payout to Tapie. The money would come from the French taxpayer.
Tapie had supported Sarkozy in the 2007 election, and judges at France’s Court of Justice of the Republic believe that he might have been awarded the sum (just one year later) in return for his contributions. Sarkozy intends to run again in 2017.
A French court had earlier ruled that Mr Tapie would have to pay back the 404 million Euros… with interest.
Miss Lagarde denies the allegations of wrongdoing. If convicted, she could spend a year in prison.
“After three years of procedure the only surviving allegation is that through inattention I may have failed to block the arbitration that put an end to the long standing Tapie litigation,” she told AFP.
The US-backed IMF has been plagued with allegations of corruption; Dominique Strauss-Kahn, another former French finance minister, was forced to resign in May 2011 following charges of attempting to rape a New York hotel maid.
Sources: BBC, Activist Post, The Telegraph, Independent
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