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Wolfowitz to plead case
Wolfowitz to plead case
Sunday April 29, 2007
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz faces the development bank's investigatory committee Monday to plead his case over revelations he ordered a huge pay deal and promotions for his girlfriend Shaha Riza.
The former US deputy secretary of defense, whose two years at the World Bank have been marked by controversy and dissent by bank staff, will meet the committee together with Riza, herself a senior bank official, and his powerful Washington lawyer Robert Bennett.
"We want to make a presentation to them to show that this conflict of interest allegation is absolutely false," Bennett told AFP, arguing that Wolfowitz is being "smeared" by opponents.
The meeting comes after weeks of pressure on Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, to resign, with top bank staff openly declaring the bank cannot move ahead on its development agenda with Wolfowitz in the top job.
The investigatory committee, drawn from the full board of 24 national representatives, is examining not just the Riza affair but Wolfowitz's naming former White House aides to key jobs in his inner circle.
"They have some policy disputes with him and there are some international power issues," said Bennett, who helped former president Bill Clinton settle a sexual harassment case in 1998.
Wolfowitz acted on the advice of the bank's ethics committee in trying to resolve a potential conflict of interest between himself and Riza after he became president in June 2005.
But officials contend that he was never directed to personally order guaranteed promotions and a pay deal worth nearly 200,000 dollars for his Libyan-born companion when she was reassigned to a US government job.
Critics say the credibility of the World Bank itself is being shredded, not least over a campaign spearheaded by Wolfowitz to root out corruption.
Pressure intensified at the end of last week with an open letter from 46 senior staff involved in implementing his "Governance and Anticorruption" strategy on the ground.
Without calling outright for the president's ouster, they appealed for "clear and decisive actions to resolve this crisis quickly," saying local bank officials in aid recipient countries are mocking Wolfowitz's anti-corruption program in light of his own behavior.
AFP
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