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

A Madrid court on Friday said ex-IMF chief and Spanish economy minister Rodrigo Rato will be handed a jail term of more than four years for tax crimes, money laundering and corruption.

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 had already been jailed in 2018 for misuse of funds, and he had returned to Madrid’s Court of Justice Friday facing fresh charges of tax fraud, corruption and money laundering.

During the hearing, the 74-year-old ex-banker had confirmed understanding the charges against him as he sat on the bench alongside another 16 defendants, among them relatives and close allies accused of helping him set up a fraudulent scheme.

Prosecutors alleged that in the decade between 2005 and 2015, Rato defrauded the Spanish tax office and lined his own pockets to the tune of 8.5 million euros ($9.3 million).

Spanish prosecutors said that he masked his fortune by using companies based in Ireland, Panama and the United Kingdom to carry out “ongoing investment activities through a host of bank accounts in the Bahamas, Luxembourg, the UK, Switzerland and Monaco among others in a scheme concealed from the Spanish tax office,” court documents showed.

A former heavyweight in the right-wing Popular Party (PP), 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 IMF in 2004. He later headed Spanish lender Bankia.