{"id":175162,"date":"2015-12-17T15:45:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T15:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=175162"},"modified":"2015-12-17T16:16:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T16:16:28","slug":"imf-chief-lagarde-to-stand-trial-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=175162","title":{"rendered":"IMF chief Lagarde ‘to stand trial in France’"},"content":{"rendered":"

IMF chief Christine Lagarde is to stand trial in France for alleged negligence over a \u20ac400m (\u00a3291m; $434m) payment to a businessman in 2008.<\/p>\n

She was finance minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government at the time of the compensation award to Bernard Tapie for the sale of a firm.<\/p>\n

Mr Tapie supported Mr Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Ms Lagarde’s lawyer described the court’s decision as “incomprehensible”, and said the IMF boss would appeal.<\/p>\n

Mr Tapie was once a majority shareholder in sports goods company Adidas but sold it in 1993 in order to become a cabinet minister in Francois Mitterrand’s Socialist government.<\/p>\n

He sued the Credit Lyonnais bank over its handling of the sale, alleging that the partly state-owned bank had defrauded him by deliberately undervaluing the company.<\/p>\n

His case was later referred by Ms Lagarde to a three-member arbitration panel which awarded the compensation.<\/p>\n

\"Christine<\/a>
Christine Lagarde denies wrongdoing in the Bernard Tapie compensation case.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Investigators suspect he was granted a deal in return for his support of Nicolas Sarkozy.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a French court ruled that Mr Tapie was not entitled to any compensation for that sale and should pay back the \u20ac400m with interest.<\/p>\n

Five-day deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n

France’s Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) decided that Ms Lagarde should be tried on the charge of “negligence by a person in position of public authority” over the compensation case, iTele TV channel and the Mediapart website reported on Thursday.<\/p>\n

A court spokesman later confirmed the decision.<\/p>\n

French media said the CJR investigation magistrates declined to follow the recommendation of another court which last year decided not to pursue the case.<\/p>\n

“It’s incomprehensible,” Ms Lagarde’s lawyer Yves Repiquet told iTele. “I will recommend Mrs Lagarde appeal against this decision.”<\/p>\n

A spokesman for France’s attorney general said Ms Lagarde would have five days to appeal, once the court decision is made public on Friday or Monday.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said the organisation – which represents 188 member nations – “continues to express its confidence in the managing director’s ability to effectively carry out her duties,” AFP reports.<\/p>\n

Ms Lagarde, 59, replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn as IMF managing director in 2011.<\/p>\n

Mr Strauss-Kahn – also a former French minister – resigned following his arrest in New York on charges of sexual assault that were later dropped.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IMF chief Christine Lagarde is to stand trial in France for alleged negligence over a \u20ac400m (\u00a3291m; $434m) payment to a businessman in 2008. She was finance minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government at the time of the compensation award to Bernard Tapie for the sale of a firm. Mr Tapie supported Mr Sarkozy in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":175163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,14],"class_list":["post-175162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/175163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}