IMF chief standing trial for negligence in France

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS

The trial of the head of the International Monetary Fund chief will start Monday for negligence in a corruption case from eight years ago, when she was France’s minister of commerce and finance.

Christine Lagarde will have to explain to judges her role in the state's €400 million ($560 million) payment to tycoon Bernard Tapie, as part of a long-running dispute between the businessman and the partly state-owned bank Credit Lyonnais over the sale of his Adidas sportswear company in 1993.

“Ms. Lagarde’s behavior proceeds not only from a questionable carelessness and precipitation, but also from a conjunction of faults which, by their nature, number, and seriousness, exceed the level of mere negligence,” the judges concluded at the end of their investigation.

Lagarde denied the charges of negligence over her role in the massive 2008 state settlement with Tapie, a close associate of then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Negligence is a non-intentional offence. I think we are all a bit negligent sometimes in our life. I have done my job as well as I could, within the limits of what I knew,” she told France 2 television on Sunday.

Lagarde, 60, became the managing director of the IMF in 2011 and was named to a second term in February this year. She is the first woman to serve as the head of the organization that began in 1944.

She is being tried by the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special French court established in 1993 that hears cases against ministers accused of misconduct.

If convicted, Lagarde faces up to a year in prison and a €15,000 ($15,884) fine. She also risks losing the IMF helm.

The trial is scheduled to last until Dec. 20, at the latest.