International | Corruption

Christine Lagarde, I.M.F. Chief, Is Found Guilty of Negligence

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty on Monday of criminal charges linked to the misuse of public funds during her time as France’s finance minister, a verdict that could force her out of her post. The judge hearing the case declined, however, to impose a fine or any jail time on Ms. Lagarde, who began her second five-year term at the I.M.F. in February. The scandal has overshadowed her work at the fund, to which she was appointed in 2011, after Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as managing director when he was accused of having sexua

International | Corruption

Head of the IMF Christine Lagarde in court charged with embezzlement and fraud

Source: Evening Standard

The head of the International Monetary Fund arrived in the dock of a Paris courtroom today as she braced herself to be formally charged with embezzlement and fraud. Christine Lagarde’s humiliation is not only a massive personal blow which could lead to her resignation, but one which will plunge the world’s banking system into further ignominy. The clearly nervous 57-year-old said nothing to reporters as she entered the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special tribunal set up to judge the conduct of France’s government ministers, shortly after 8.30am. Lagarde faces a maximum

International | Brazil | Corruption

Dilma Rousseff asks Brazil supreme court to delay impeachment process

Source: the guardian

Brazil’s embattled president, Dilma Rousseff, has resorted to the country’s supreme court in a last-ditch attempt to avert likely defeat in a criticalimpeachment vote in congress that could lead to her removal from office. Rousseff’s attorney general, José Eduardo Cardozo, asked the top court for an injunction to suspend Sunday’s lower house vote until the full court can rule on what he called procedural irregularities in the impeachment process. Rousseff, already struggling with Brazil’s worst economic crisis in decades and a historic corruption scandal, has lost support with

International | Corruption

IMF’s Christine Lagarde: “When The World Goes Downhill, We Thrive”

Source: Global Research

When we wrote earlier that based on a leaked Wikileaks transcript, which the Greek government interpreted “as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected”, the article promptly went viral. While it remains to be determined if the IMF indeed made such an implied threat, we attribute this spike in interest to the general public’s surprise that the IMF could stoop to such a low, even by its own standards, level as to use a nation of 11 million people as a lab rat on which to conduct policy experiments.

International | Corruption

Tapie Affair: IMF head Christine Lagarde ordered to face trial by French court over tycoon payments

Source: International Business Times

A French court has ordered IMF boss Christine Lagarde to face trial over the part she played in the Tapie Affair, regarding a €400m (£291m, $433m) transfer to French business tycoon and entrepreneur Bernard Tapie. In September, France's main prosecutor recommended magistrates at the Cour de Justice de la Republique, which deals with crime allegations against government officials, drop the investigation. The magistrates were probing Lagarde's alleged negligence in regards to the affair when she was finance minister of the country. In 2008, when Lagarde served under Nicolas Sarkozy'sgov

International | Corruption

One of the biggest winners of Sepp Blatter’s resignation is women’s soccer

Source: Business Insider

In a shocking move, Sepp Blatter announced on Tuesday that he will step down as president of FIFA. While most will wait to see who will replace Blatter and whether that will have a big impact on the alleged corruption that plagues the organization, there is one big part of the soccer world that will almost certainly receive both an immediate and long-term boost from his resignation: women's soccer.