The sentence follows the conviction of Rodrigo Rato, the disgraced former heavyweight of Spain’s conservative Popular Party, who was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in 2018 for misusing funds during his tenure at the Spanish lender Bankia.
Prosecutors had accused Rato of defrauding the Spanish tax office and embezzling 8.5 million euros between 2005 and 2015. The court found him guilty of three offenses against the Treasury, money laundering, and corruption between individuals, according to a statement from the court.
Rato was sentenced to four years, nine months, and one day in prison, along with a fine of over two million euros (approximately $2.1 million). The court acknowledged that the “undue delays” in the proceedings, which lasted over nine years, contributed to a reduction in his sentence.
In an interview with the conservative daily ABC, Rato expressed his intention to appeal the ruling, calling it “unfair and lacking any legal basis.”
Rato, who served as Spain’s economy minister and deputy prime minister under José María Aznar before heading the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007, later became the head of Bankia. There, he misused company credit cards for personal expenses between 2010 and 2012, which led to his 2018 jail sentence.
In late 2020, he was moved to a semi-open prison regime, shortly after being acquitted in another case concerning fraud and falsifying financial records during Bankia’s 2011 flotation.
The Bankia scandal emerged amid Spain’s severe economic crisis, which left many people financially struggling. The public outrage intensified when the government spent 22 billion euros to bail out the failing lender, which became a symbol of financial excess.
In the same case, another defendant, Domingo Plazas, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for money laundering and aiding two of Rato’s tax offenses. Alberto Portuondo, another co-defendant, received a sentence of three months and one day for collaborating in a corruption scheme with Rato, in which they received kickbacks in exchange for securing Bankia contracts.
Thirteen other defendants were acquitted in the trial.
Two of Rato’s successors at the IMF have also faced legal issues. France’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who took over from Rato in 2007, was tried in 2015 on charges of procuring prostitutes in a sex scandal but was acquitted. In 2016, current European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, who succeeded Strauss-Kahn, was found guilty of “negligence” for her role in a state payout to tycoon Bernard Tapie during her time as France’s finance minister, though she was not sentenced.
AFP
