- Rato lined his pockets for 8.5 million euros: prosecutors.
- He spent 8 years variously as the Minister of Economy.
- Rato was found guilty of “three offences” including money laundering.
MADRID: Former IMF chief and Spanish Economy Minister Rodrigo Rato was sentenced to more than four years in prison for tax crimes, money laundering and corruption, a Madrid court said on Friday.
The sentence comes after the notorious former heavyweight of Spain’s conservative Popular Party was jailed for four-and-a-half years in 2018 for misappropriating funds while working at a bank.
Prosecutors alleged that Rato defrauded the Spanish tax office and pocketed 8.5 million euros between 2005 and 2015.
Jurors found Ratu guilty of “three offenses against the Treasury, one offense of money laundering and one offense of corruption between persons,” the court said in a statement.
Ratu was sentenced to four years, nine months and one day in prison and fined more than 2 million euros ($2.1 million), which he can appeal to the Supreme Court.
Ratu spent eight years serving variously as Minister of Economy and Deputy Prime Minister in the conservative government of José María Aznar before leading the International Monetary Fund from 2004 to 2007.
He later headed Spanish lender Bankia, where he misused company credit cards for personal expenses between 2010 and 2012.
He sentenced him to 2018 in prison before he moved to a semi-open prison regime in late 2020.
The Bankia scandal came to light at the height of a severe economic crisis that left many people in dire financial straits.
That sparked outrage in Spain, which worsened when the government spent 22 billion euros on a bailout for a failed lender that quickly gained notoriety as a symbol of financial excess.