Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, will soon learn if she must face a full criminal investigation over her role in a contentious financial deal that dates back to her time as French finance minister. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/business/global/lagarde-to-appear-in-french-court.html  Ms. Lagarde, Nicolas Sarkozy’s finance minister from 2007 to 2011, allowed a court case to go to an arbitration panel that awarded Bernard Tapie, former owner of Adidas and the Olympique Marseille soccer team who had  ties to the former president, Mr. Sarkozy , a settlement of €403 million, or about $518 million at current exchange rates. Critics have argued that the award was overly generous to Mr. Tapie and suggested that the businessman — who began backing Mr. Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular Movement in 2007 — had benefited from special treatment. If she were to step down, she would be the second consecutive French leader of the I.M.F. to be felled by scandal: The career of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Ms. Lagarde’s immediate predecessor at the institution and once a Socialist contender for the French presidency, was destroyed in 2011 by accusations that he sexually assaulted a housekeeper in a New York hotel. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/business/global/euro-zone-crisis-has-increased-imfs-power.html?pagewanted=all