A group of French judges was meeting on Thursday to decide whether International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde should be investigated for abuse of authority in an arbitration case when she was finance minister.
The Court of Justice of the Republic was due to announce later Thursday whether Lagarde's decision to settle a long-running dispute between the state and businessman Bernard Tapie by arbitration should be investigated by the court's investigating commission.
Tapie sued the state over the 1993 sale by then state-owned bank Credit Lyonnais of his share in Adidas sportswear company. Tapie maintained the bank defrauded him.
The case had dragged on for years when Lagarde decided to send it to arbitration.
Tapie, a former Socialist minister who supported Nicolas Sarkozy for president in 2007, came away with 285 million euros.
Acting on behalf of a group of Socialist MPs, Supreme Court prosecutor Jean-Louis Nadal petitioned the court to investigate ordering arbitration instead of letting the matter be decided by the courts and for refusing expert advice to appeal the huge payout.
Lagarde, a trained lawyer, who replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the IMF in early July after the Frenchman resigned to fight charges of sexual assault, has denied any wrongdoing.
There is no suggestion she personally profited from the affair.
If the court's seven-judge petition commission decides there are grounds for an investigation, a Supreme Court prosecutor must put together a report on the case for the three judges of the investigating commission.
An inquiry could take months to get underway and hang over Lagarde in her first months in Washington. The court's announcement has already twice postponed its decision since June. - Sapa-dpa