Spain’s former vice president and IMF head enters jail

Spain’s former vice president and head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Rodrigo Rato entered jail on Thursday in Madrid, after being sentenced with four and a half years in jail for embezzlement while leading Bankia bank.

The courts found him guilty of misusing the bank’s funds to make private purchases with his company credit cards.

The sentence claimed that while leading the bank, Rato not only kept the fraud but expanded it –the whole network of 63 managers spent some 12 million euros with their credit cards for private expenses.

Rodrigo Rato, member of the People’s Party, served as Spanish economy minister and deputy president from 1996 to 2004 under José María Aznar’s time in power.

After that he became the managing director of the IMF from 2004 to 2007, and three years later he went on to be the president of a new bank called Bankia, which was born after a merger of six savings banks.

In 2012, two years after entering Bankia, Rato resigned with the bank on the verge of bankruptcy –it ended up surviving after a 20 billion euro state bailout.