Judges find Lagarde guilty of negligence

Paris: A French court yesterday found IMF head Christine Lagarde (pictured) guilty of negligence over a massive state payout to a tycoon when she was French finance minister but spared her a fine or prison sentence.
The ruling was a rare setback in Lagarde’s glittering career but it was not clear how it would affect her position at the International Monetary Fund, whose board was to meet in Washington to discuss the court’s decision. A special court in Paris found against Lagarde over her handling of a dispute between the state and flamboyant businessman Bernard Tapie, which ended in a €404m ($422m) award for Tapie.
The court rapped Lagarde for failing to contest the massive payment, which was linked to Tapie’s sale of the Adidas sportswear brand to Credit Lyonnaise bank.
Crucially, however, the Paris court exempted her from any penalty, citing her “international reputation” and the fact that at the time of the events in 2008 she had been busy fighting a global financial inferno. The high-flying 60-year-old former corporate lawyer became the first female IMF chief in 2011, succeeding her disgraced compatriot Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
She was not in the Paris court for the ruling. Her lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve told reporters she was in Washington for “professional reasons”. He welcomed the absence of a sentence but said he “would have preferred that she be cleared outright”.