{"id":187373,"date":"2013-03-20T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/20\/at-least-the-imf-isnt-being-run-by-crooks-ummmm-nevermind\/"},"modified":"2013-03-20T19:51:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T00:51:00","slug":"at-least-the-imf-isnt-being-run-by-crooks-ummmm-nevermind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/20\/at-least-the-imf-isnt-being-run-by-crooks-ummmm-nevermind\/","title":{"rendered":"At Least the IMF Isn&#8217;t Being Run By Crooks \u2026\u2026\u2026 Ummmm \u2026\u2026\u2026 Nevermind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Her apartment in France <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2013\/mar\/20\/christine-lagarde-flat-raided-police\">just got raided as a part of a corruption investigation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Police have searched the Paris home of the head of the International Monetary Fund as part of a fraud investigation centred on a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Christine Lagarde&#8217;s flat was raided along with that of her office manager and the home of businessman Bernard Tapie, a former politician, actor, singer and television celebrity.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The IMF chief has been the subject of preliminary investigations for &#8220;complicity in the embezzlement of public funds&#8221;, since 2011, when Tapie was awarded \u20ac284m of public money in compensation in a financial dispute while she was economy minister.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The search came hours after the French government was rocked by a separate scandal after the budget minister J\u00e9r\u00f4me Cahuzac was put under criminal investigation amid claims he hid money from the French taxman in a secret Swiss bank account. Lagarde and Cahuzac have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The accusations against Lagarde centre on her role in what is known as the Tapie Affair, a row that has rumbled for two decades, which ended when she made a controversial decision to refer the businessman&#8217;s dispute with the public bank Cr\u00e9dit Lyonnais to arbitration. Critics say she abused her authority. Investigators are looking into whether Tapie was given a secret deal in return for supporting Sarkozy during his successful 2007 presidential election campaign.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, a police raid does not imply guilt, but it does show just how corrupt the political elites are as a class, and why the idea of apolitical &#8220;technocrats&#8221; is a fraud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Her apartment in France just got raided as a part of a corruption investigation: Police have searched the Paris home of the head of the International Monetary Fund as part of a fraud investigation centred on a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.Christine Lagarde&#8217;s flat was raided along with that of her office manager and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1004,972,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance","category-justice","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187373"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}