John Key is obvious candidate

The continuing shadow of the Tapie scandal overhanging Christine Lagarde has reappeared and threatens to create at the head of the International Monetary Fund a vacancy that could by filled by New Zealand Premier John Key.

South Seas prime ministers past and present are currently in vogue to fill exactly this kind of top-line international forum role, a trend that was begun by former New Zealand premier Mike Moore taking the helm of the World Trade Organisation.

Another former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark is in full campaign for the top slot at the United Nations, as is now the former prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd.

Miss Lagarde continues to be haunted by the Affaire Tapie in which French businessman, politician, and showman Bernard Tapie is accused of using connections to extract from a governmentcontrolled bank a huge discretionary sum of money to which he was not in fact entitled.

Now Miss Lagarde has been formally been called to book by France's supreme court over what has become one of France's saga-like politico-legal scandals of which the Dreyfus Affair remains still the best known.

She faces a penalty of up to a year in prison and/or a fine of $15,000 for her part as a former politician in the Affaire Tapie.

If as now seems certain the proceedings will in fact proceed, then she will find it increasingly more difficult to remain in the IMF role even though the fund, actually a bank, has formally reposed its confidence in her.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk Thursday 28 July 2016