Ex-IMF chief Rato sentenced to new prison term over corruption
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Rodrigo Rato, who led the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007, was sentenced to almost five years in prison for various crimes related to corruption.
PHOTO: REUTERS
MADRID – A Madrid court has sentenced former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Rodrigo Rato to almost five years in prison for various crimes related to corruption.
Rato, who has already spent two years in prison over a separate embezzlement case during his tenure as chairman of Spanish lender Bankia, has denied any wrongdoing throughout the nine-year probe.
Following a year-long trial, the court convicted Rato on three counts of offences against Spanish tax authorities, as well as corruption involving individuals outside the public sector, and money laundering. It sentenced him to four years, nine months and a day in prison.
Since the decision can be challenged on appeal before the Supreme Court, Rato will not have to serve any prison time for now until there is a final ruling, a court spokesman said.
Rato, 75, who chaired the IMF from 2004 to 2007 and Bankia between 2010 and 2012, previously spent two years in prison after being convicted in 2017 over the misuse of Bankia credit cards to buy jewels, holidays and expensive clothes.
In the more recent corruption case, prosecutors requested a total jail sentence of 63 years for the 11 charges against him.
In 2023, Rato’s lawyer, Ms Maria Masso, from law firm Baker McKenzie, asked the court to dismiss the charges, arguing that Rato’s rights were violated during a 2015 search of his home, so evidence obtained in the raid should be annulled.
The court also ordered Rato to pay fines worth more than €2 million (S$2.8 million), as well as €568,413 to tax authorities.
Rato, who served as deputy prime minister in the conservative People’s Party government between 1996 and 2004, was acquitted in a separate fraud trial over the listing of Bankia in 2012. REUTERS
