Lagarde Found Guilty of Negligence

French judges on Monday found IMF chief Christine Lagarde guilty of negligence for failing to challenge a €400 million ($417 million) state arbitration payout to a business tycoon in 2008 when she was French finance minister. Despite the ruling the judges did not hand down any sentence in the case on her decision to allow the rare out-of-court arbitration payment. She has denied the negligence charges, Reuters reported. Her lawyer said immediately after the ruling that his team would look into appealing the decision. The verdict threatens to derail the stellar career of the first woman ever to become finance chief of a Group of Eight country. The ruling risks triggering a new leadership crisis at the International Monetary Fund after Lagarde’s predecessor Dominique Strauss Khan resigned in 2011 over a sex assault scandal. The trial revived concerns in France about high-level corruption, shining a spotlight on intimate ties between politicians and businesspeople, and on the large sums that are sometimes used to grease the country’s political wheels.