A special French court has found the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) guilty of negligence – by allowing the misuse of public funds over a large state payout to a business tycoon, when she was the country’s finance minister. <br /><br /> The judges ruled that Christine Lagarde had failed to challenge a 400-million euro state arbitration payment to Bernard Tapie in 2008.<br /><br /> Despite the ruling the court decided not to hand down a sentence. The charge carried a potential punishment of a year in prison and a 15,000-euro fine.<br /><br /> Lagarde denied the charge. Her lawyer said their team would look into appealing the decision.<br /><br /> “Yes I am a quite disappointed still because we were asking for an acquittal so I am not going to lie by saying that all is good. That said, let’s put things into perspective because there is a partial acquittal and also because, once again, Mrs Lagarde has not been sentenced to anything,” Patrick Maisonneuve told reporters afterwards.<br /><br /> In the summer of 2008 the then French finance minister approved the out-of-court settlement with the businessmen to end a long-running dispute between him and the French state.<br /><br /> In the early 1990s, Bernard Tapie was a majority shareholder in sports goods company Adidas.<br /><br /> After launching a political career and becoming a cabinet minister in Francois Mitterrand’s Socialist government in 1992, Tapie had to sell the company.<br /><br /> In 1993, he sued Credit Lyonnais, a state-owned bank that handled the sale, alleging that the bank had defrauded him by deliberately undervaluing the firm.<br /><br /> Lagarde decided to accept an extremely rare private arbitration process which ended up with such a large payout at French taxpayers’ expense.<br /><br /> During the trial the court’s president expressed astonishment that she had not challenged the decision by the three arbitration judges to accord the payment to Tapie.<br /><br /> Even the chief prosecutor had recommended that Lagarde be acquitted, last week describing the case against her as “very weak”.<br /><br /> The special court of three judges, six parliamentary deputies and six senators went against the prosecution’s recommendation. <br /><br /> The ex-finance minister pleaded on Friday that she had acted with the sole intention of defending the public interest.<br /><br /> But the decision calls her future at the helm of the IMF into question. A spokesman for the Washington-based institution said the executive board was expected to meet shortly to consider the implications of the verdict.<br />
