Sawt Falasteen - Ex-IMF chief Rato gets four-year jail term in Spain for tax crimes

The sentence comes after the disgraced former heavyweight of Spain's conservative Popular Party was jailed for four and a half years in 2018 for misusing funds while working at lender Bankia.

Prosecutors had alleged that Rato defrauded the Spanish tax office and lined his own pockets to the tune of 8.5 million euros between 2005 and 2015.

Judges found Rato guilty of "three offences against the Treasury, one offence of money laundering and one offence of corruption between individuals", the court said in a statement.

Rato was sentenced to four years, nine months and one day in jail and fined more than two million euros ($2.1 million), which he can appeal at the Supreme Court.

The court added that the "undue delays" in the proceedings, which lasted more than nine years, reduced the sentence.

Rato refused to comment on the decision, wishing journalists gathered outside the court "a very merry Christmas", and said he would respond in a written message to court.

Rato spent eight years variously serving as economy minister and a deputy prime minister in the conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar before going on to lead the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007.

- Economic crisis -

He later headed Spanish lender Bankia, where he misused company credit cards for personal expenses between 2010 and 2012.

That earned him the 2018 jail sentence before he was moved to a semi-open prison regime in late 2020.

That decision came just after he was acquitted in another case of fraud and falsifying the books during the 2011 flotation of Bankia.

The Bankia scandal came to light at the height of a severe economic crisis that left many people struggling financially.

It sparked outrage in Spain, which worsened when the government then spent 22 billion euros on a bailout for the failing lender that quickly won notoriety as a symbol of financial excess.

A second defendant, Domingo Plazas, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for money laundering and collaborating in two of Rato's tax offences.

Another defendant, Alberto Portuondo, got three months and one day for colluding with Rato in a corruption scheme whereby they received kickbacks in return for securing Bankia contracts.

The court cleared the 13 other defendants in the trial.

Z.Ramadan--SF-PST