Christine Lagarde looked to be safe in her role as the International Monetary Fund’s managing director on Monday night after its board gave her its backing, just hours after she was convicted of “negligence” over a huge payout to a business tycoon while she was French finance minister.
The IMF board praised the “wide respect and trust” for Mrs Lagarde’s leadership as it expressed its “full confidence” in her ability to continue in the role at the upper echelons of international finance.
France’s Court of Justice of the Republic, a special tribunal for ministers, earlier chose not to punish Mrs Christine Lagarde or give her a criminal record. She had faced a one-year term and a €15,000 (£13,000) fine, threatening to derail her career.
“There is 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,” she said. The ruling came after a week-long trial in which she received a rough ride.
She had maintained her innocence, and the prosecutor had asked for an acquittal over the “very weak” case after advising against bringing it to court in the first place.
Proceedings centred on Ms Christine Lagarde’s 2007 decision to allow a dispute over flamboyant magnate Bernard Tapie’s sale of the Adidas sports brand to Credit Lyonnais bank to be resolved by a rarely-used private arbitration panel, instead of through the courts.
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