Former French finance minister accused of negligence leading to misuse of public funds over payout to Bernard Tapie

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, is due to stand trial on Monday afternoon over her role in a €400m (£335m) payment to a French businessman when she was France’s finance minister in the government of former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Speaking on the eve of her trial, Lagarde said she was confident she had done nothing wrong over state the payout to Bernard Tapie in 2008.

Lagarde is accused of negligence leading to misuse of public funds by improperly approving a decision to allow an out-of-court arbitration in the dispute with Sarkozy supporter Tapie.



She could face up to a year in jail and a fine of €15,000 if convicted. A guilty verdict would risk plunging the IMF into a new leadership crisis; Lagarde took over in 2011 when Dominique Strauss-Kahn quit because of a sex scandal.

“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 said on France 2 television.

Lagarde said she was confident and determined, and denied that she had favoured Tapie or acted on Sarkozy’s orders.

Patrick Maisonneuve, a lawyer for Lagarde, told Europe-1 on Monday morning that he would seek a postponement when the proceedings open, arguing that it doesn’t make sense for Lagarde to go on trial while a separate investigation in the case is still underway.

The case goes back to when Tapie sued the state for compensation after selling his stake in sports company Adidas to Credit Lyonnais in 1993. He claimed the bank, owned by the French state at the time, had defrauded him after it resold his stake for a much higher sum.

Lagarde, who was French finance minister from 2007 to 2011, signed off on the decision to seek an extremely rare out-of-court settlement in the dispute between the state and Tapie that ended up costing taxpayers dearly.

The arbitration judges ruled in Tapie’s favour and ordered the state payout, but appeal courts have since thrown out that decision.

A Paris appeals court ordered Tapie to reimburse the state, but he has lodged an appeal that is still pending.

The trial will be only be the fifth in the history of the Cour de Justice de la Republique, a special court that tries ministers for crimes in office made up of three judges and six lawmakers from the lower and upper houses of parliament.

The IMF said on Thursday that its executive board continued to be briefed on the court case and retained confidence in Lagarde’s ability to lead the organisation.