Former IMF chief Rodrigo Rato jailed for tax crimes in Spain

A Madrid court on Friday sentenced ex-IMF chief and Spanish economy minister Rodrigo Rato to more than four years in jail for tax crimes, money laundering, and corruption.

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 a bank.

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 offenses 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.

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.

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.

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.