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| The case involving former IMF head Rodrigo Rato outraged Spaniards who endured a severe economic crisis (AFP Photo/DANI POZO) |
Madrid (AFP) - Spain's Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed former IMF chief Rodrigo Rato's jail sentence of four years and six months for misusing funds in a case that sparked outrage when it was uncovered at the height of the country's economic crisis.
In February
2017, Rato was found guilty by the Madrid-based National Court of paying for
personal expenses with credit cards put at his disposal when he was the boss of
Caja Madrid and Bankia, at a time when both banks were in difficulty.
The
69-year-old, who is also a former Spanish economy minister, had since then been
free on bail pending an appeal.
The case
shocked Spain, where it was uncovered at the height of the crisis that left
many people struggling financially. Bankia later had to be nationalised.
Far-left
party Podemos welcomed the court ruling, saying Spaniards had long demanded
justice "for those who robbed public money, for those who ripped off
thousands of families, for those who burdened us with debt for life".
"We
applaud the fact that some of those responsible, like Rodrigo Rato, get at
least part of what they deserve," it said in a tweet.
Misuse of
12 million euros
Rato was
tried with 64 other former executives and board members at both banks accused
of misusing a total of 12 million euros ($13.8 million) between 2003 and 2012
in personal expenses.
Those
included petrol for their cars, supermarket shopping, pricey holidays, luxury
bags or parties in nightclubs.
One of the
executives, Miguel Blesa -- Rato's predecessor at Caja Madrid -- was sentenced
to six years in jail.
In July
2017, Blesa was found dead with a gunshot wound to his chest at a private
hunting estate in southern Spain.
An autopsy
ruled it was suicide.
Second
trial
The Supreme
Court will now notify the National Court of its decision, which will then
summon Rato and give him a deadline -- usually 10 to 15 days -- to allow him to
pick a prison and go there voluntarily.
Authorities
will issue an arrest warrant against him if he does not.
Rato was
economy minister and deputy prime minister in the conservative government of
Jose Maria Aznar from 1996 to 2004, before going on to head up the
International Monetary Fund until 2007.
His
subsequent career as a banker in Spain was short-lived -- from 2010 to 2012.
But apart from the case of the undeclared credit cards, it also led to another
banking scandal considered the country's biggest.
Thousands
of small-scale investors lost their money after they were persuaded to convert
their savings to shares ahead of the flotation of Bankia in 2011, with Rato at
the reins.
Less than a
year later, he resigned as it became known that Bankia was in dire straits.
The state
injected billions of euros but faced with the scale of Bankia's losses and
trouble in other banks, it asked the European Union for a bailout for the
entire banking sector and eventually received 41 billion euros.
Rato is due
to stand trial over the case, accused of falsifying information about Bankia's
finances to encourage investors to buy into its stock market listing.
He is the
third former IMF chief to get into trouble with the law.
His
successor Dominique Strauss-Kahn was tried in 2015 on pimping charges in a
lurid sex scandal, and was acquitted.
And
Christine Lagarde, who took over from Strauss-Kahn and is the current IMF
chief, was found guilty of negligence over a state payout to a tycoon when she
was French finance minister, though she received no penalty.
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