IMF Chief Lagarde To Stand Trial

Charges are unrelated to her greatest crimes – representing the US-controlled IMF and Western monied interests at the expense of beneficial social change.

The agency is a bandit operation, the loan shark lender of last resort, force-feeding economic and financial harshness on nations in return for loans – followed by new ones needed to pay debt service, an endless cycle of debt peonage, monied interests profiting hugely.

Ordinary people suffer greatly as expected. So do debt-entrapped countries, forced to obey harsh IMF diktats – incompatible with civil and human rights.

Nations are strip-mined of their resources, material wealth, state enterprises, and other crown jewels – transferred from public to private hands, hollowed out into dystopian backwaters, their people able to have jobs transformed into serfs.

Except for the privileged few, the result is the worst of all possible worlds – wracked by extreme poverty, hunger, malnutrition, diseases and early usually painful death.

Washington got Lagarde appointed – to serve as a neoliberal maestro of misery.

Her activities as French finance minister were investigated earlier for serious improprieties – specifically a controversy pitting tycoon Bernard Tapie against the French state.

She issued a beneficial 403 euro arbitration order earlier in his favor, against the government she was sworn to serve.

The French Court of Cassation (its highest judicial body) Attorney General Jean-Louis Nadal earlier ordered the Tapie dossier made public, including allegations indicating Lagarde circumvented the law – to benefit Tapie illegally, overriding an appeals court ruling against him.

A French judicial commission ordered Lagarde to stand trial. She’s charged with negligence in the long-running so-called L’Affaire Tapie. He was ordered to repay his windfall.

Observers called France’s Cour de Justice de la Republique judicial commission ruling last Thursday a surprise. In September, prosecutors recommended things be dropped.

Her legal team issued a statement, saying “Ms. Lagarde would like to reaffirm that she acted in the best interest of the French State and in full compliance with the law.”

She’s appealing the ruling against her. Things could drag on for many months before concluding.

IMF communications director Gerry Rice issued a statement, saying “(t)he Executive Board continues to express its confidence in the Managing Director’s ability to effectively carry out her duties.”

He stopped short of explaining  her mandate is benefitting powerful monied interests at the expense of everyone else.

Expect no interruption in business as usual at the agency she heads – with full US support.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”. www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html Visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.