Wolfie watch

by | Apr 16, 2007


For those of you following Wolfowitz’s woes, World Bank President has full coverage, including this response, from a World Bank retiree, to the President’s latest attempt to save his job…

“In his email of April 14, Wolfowitz draws our attention to his ‘significant facts.’ The ‘significant facts’ he omits are:

1) The Board was willing to accept his recusal but had to back down because apparently after subsequent advice from his attorney he had a change of heart and refused to recuse himself on “professional relationship” with his girlfriend. So his offer of recusal was a farce (and the Board saw it as such).
2) Contrary to his assertion that he was only looking after the interests of the Bank, the documents make it abundantly clear that he was only interested in safeguarding Riza’s interests. It was he who devised the package (with Ms. Riza’s help?) rather than HR.
3) Contrary to what he says, he was actively involved in devising the package for Riza, overruling the considerably less generous (and more reasonable) package proposed by HR. He cleverly directs Coll to give Riza an option between the two packages. One has to be stupid to elect to choose the vastly inferior package.
4) He was clearly both negotiating for Riza and turning around and acting like the ‘decider’.

If this is not corruption, I don’t know what is.”

Background here.

Author

  • David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation and at New York University, where he founded the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver the SDG targets for preventing all forms of violence, strengthening governance, and promoting justice and inclusion. He was lead author for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All and senior external adviser for the UN-World Bank flagship study on prevention, Pathways for Peace. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). In 2001, he helped develop and launch the UK’s network of climate diplomats. David lives in and works from Pisa, Italy.

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