Paul Wolfowitz tries to scam the World Bank

[jafar00]

I guess someone should have told him the World Bank won't put up with the same corruption as the Bush Government is famous for. ;)

World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz had to fight for his political life after a favoritism scandal surrounding his girlfriend was revealed.

A weekend of high-level talks among global financial leaders came as calls for Wolfowitz to resign mounted.

After a day long meeting the board of executives detailed the findings of its investigation in the row over Wolfowitz's Libyan born partner, Shasha Riza.

The 24 executive directors released 100 pages of documents along with a statement revealing that on the former US deputy defense secretary's personal direction, Riza was given salary raises that took her annual paycheck up to 200,000 US dollars.

According to the documents she remained on the World Bank payroll even after her reassignment from the WB to the US State Department.

"The executive directors will move expeditiously to reach a conclusion on possible actions to take," the board's statement said.

Wolfowitz said on Thursday "I will accept any remedies proposed by the executive board."

World Bank president apologized for his actions saying "I made a mistake for which I am sorry."

His regrets and apologies, however, were not enough for the WB's staff who say his actions have "destroyed" the trust of employees and that he should "quit".

The Financial Times editorial also called for Wolfowitz to go either voluntarily or at the behest of the board.

Paul Wolfowitz is no stranger to scandals, having been under attack for his engineering of the Iraq war. He was the Pentagon's deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005, before his controversial nomination as the President of World Bank by the US government.

He is also under fire from staffers for his management style, following a series of clashes with the board and hostility towards his appointment of Republican Party allies to jobs in his inner circle.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=5923&sectionid=3510203

[potter]

Corruption in the Bush white house? Sleeeeeeezy appointments? Nahhhhhhh.....:rolleyes:

This administration is living in some funny little world aint' they?

[wonder cow]

How can people be so blatant about this kind of stuff? Do they not have any morals, for crying out loud?

[Buck Laser]

How can people be so blatant about this kind of stuff? Do they not have any morals, for crying out loud?


In all honesty, I think that's a big part of the problem with the so-called neo-conservative movement. They are utterly cynical, and their only value is winning. They don't plan about what to do if they do win, and they think even considering the possibility of defeat is "wrong-headed" thinking.

This is a fine mess they've got us in.

[Kallisti]

Considering all of the scrutiny he was already under, this seems a strange mistake.
And for what? Sex.
The power of instinct.

[ECW]

Thieves and crooks and scammers, oh my!

What he made come to pass in Iraq,
So shall he fleece the world!

[BoogyMan]

I love watching folks spin the actions of one man into a global conspiracy. :D

Wolfowitz has dug his own metaphorical grave in this case and the idiot should suffer the consequences for his sleazy actions.

[Buck Laser]

I love watching folks spin the actions of one man into a global conspiracy. :D

Wolfowitz has dug his own metaphorical grave in this case and the idiot should suffer the consequences for his sleazy actions.


The difference between you and me, Boog, is that I think the neoconservative philosophy engenders a callous attitude toward human virtues. Wolfowitz seems to see ANY situation as an opportunity to pursue his own unstated goals. I suspect you'd really LIKE to believe that the neocons are basically good people, even though most of the available evidence points to contrary.

[BoogyMan]

Like I said, Wolfowitz deserves to face the consequences of his actions and hopefully he will be made an example of.

[Caravaggio]

I guess someone should have told him the World Bank won't put up with the same corruption as the Bush Government is famous for.


Yet...Sandy Burglar gets a pass....Yawn!

[Buck Laser]

I guess someone should have told him the World Bank won't put up with the same corruption as the Bush Government is famous for.


Yet...Sandy Burglar gets a pass....Yawn!


What does Sandy Berger have to do with Wolfowitz? Or are you just changing the subject?

[Caravaggio]

I guess someone should have told him the World Bank won't put up with the same corruption as the Bush Government is famous for.


Yet...Sandy Burglar gets a pass....Yawn!


What does Sandy Berger have to do with Wolfowitz? Or are you just changing the subject?



What does Wolfowitz troubles now... which has nothing to do with his being in the Bush Admin currently...figure into the scheme of things?...but Sandy Burglar steals secrets related to 9/11 and he gets a pass?

[Buck Laser]

What does Wolfowitz troubles now... which has nothing to do with his being in the Bush Admin currently...figure into the scheme of things?...but Sandy Burglar steals secrets related to 9/11 and he gets a pass?


I think the girlfriend he was trying to get into a cushy position at the World Bank was his Assistant Director in the DOD. And Wolfowitz was trying to change the focus of the World Bank from small nation economic development to attacking graft--against the wishes of the Board of Directors.

Once again, your Berger references utterly miss the point.

[Caravaggio]

The Wolfowitz Files
The anatomy of a World Bank smear.

Monday, April 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT




The World Bank released its files in the case of President Paul Wolfowitz's ethics on Friday, and what a revealing download it is. On the evidence in these 109 pages, it is clearer than ever that this flap is a political hit based on highly selective leaks to a willfully gullible press corps.

Mr. Wolfowitz asked the World Bank board to release the documents, after it became possible the 24 executive directors would adjourn early Friday morning without taking any action in the case. This would have allowed Mr. Wolfowitz's anonymous bank enemies to further spin their narrative that he had taken it upon himself to work out a sweetheart deal for his girlfriend and hide it from everyone.

The documents tell a very different story--one that makes us wonder if some bank officials weren't trying to ambush Mr. Wolfowitz from the start. Bear with us as we report the details, because this is a case study in the lack of accountability at these international satrapies.

The paper trail shows that Mr. Wolfowitz had asked to recuse himself from matters related to his girlfriend, a longtime World Bank employee, before he signed his own employment contract. The bank's general counsel at the time, Roberto Danino, wrote in a May 27, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyers:

"First, I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Wolfowitz has disclosed to the Board, through you, that he has a pre-existing relationship with a Bank staff member, and that he proposes to resolve the conflict of interest in relation to Staff Rule 3.01, Paragraph 4.02 by recusing himself from all personnel matters and professional contact related to the staff member." (Our emphasis here and elsewhere.)

That would have settled the matter at any rational institution, given that his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, worked four reporting layers below the president in the bank hierarchy. But the bank board--composed of representatives from donor nations--decided to set up an ethics committee to investigate. And it was the ethics committee that concluded that Ms. Riza's job entailed a "de facto conflict of interest" that could only be resolved by her leaving the bank.

Ms. Riza was on a promotion list at the time, and so the bank's ethicists also proposed that she be compensated for this blow to her career. In a July 22, 2005, ethics committee discussion memo, Mr. Danino noted that "there would be two avenues here for promotion--an 'in situ' promotion to Grade GH for the staff member" and promotion through competitive selection to another position." Or, as an alternative, "The Bank can also decide, as part of settlement of claims, to offer an ad hoc salary increase."

Five days later, on July 27, ethics committee chairman Ad Melkert formally advised Mr. Wolfowitz in a memo that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record . . ." In the same memo, Mr. Melkert recommends "that the President, with the General Counsel, communicates this advice" to the vice president for human resources "so as to implement" it immediately.

And in an August 8 letter, Mr. Melkert advised that the president get this done pronto: "The EC [ethics committee] cannot interact directly with staff member situations, hence Xavier [Coll, the human resources vice president] should act upon your instruction." Only then did Mr. Wolfowitz instruct Mr. Coll on the details of Ms. Riza's new job and pay raise.

Needless to say, none of this context has appeared in the media smears suggesting that Mr. Wolfowitz pulled a fast one to pad the pay of Ms. Riza. Yet the record clearly shows he acted only after he had tried to recuse himself but then wasn't allowed to do so by the ethics committee. And he acted only after that same committee advised him to compensate Ms. Riza for the damage to her career from a "conflict of interest" that was no fault of her own.

Based on this paper trail, Mr. Wolfowitz's only real mistake was in assuming that everyone else was acting in good faith. Yet when some of these details leaked to the media, nearly everyone else at the bank dodged responsibility and let Mr. Wolfowitz twist in the wind. Mr. Melkert, a Dutch politician now at the U.N., seems to have played an especially cowardly role.

In an October 24, 2005 letter to Mr. Wolfowitz, he averred that "because the outcome is consistent with the Committee's findings and advice above, the Committee concurs with your view that this matter can be treated as closed." A month later, on November 25, Mr. Melkert even sent Mr. Wolfowitz a personal, hand-written note saying, "I would like to thank you for the very open and constructive spirit of our discussions, knowing in particular the sensitivity to Shaha, who I hope will be happy in her new assignment."

And when anonymous World Bank staffers began to circulate emails making nasty allegations about Ms. Shaha's job transfer and pay in early 2006, Mr. Melkert dismissed them in a letter to Mr. Wolfowitz on February 28, 2006, because they "did not contain new information warranting any further review by the Committee." Yet amid the recent media smears, Mr. Melkert has minimized his own crucial role.

All of this is so unfair that Mr. Wolfowitz could be forgiven for concluding that bank officials insisted he play a role in raising Ms. Riza's pay precisely so they could use it against him later. Even if that isn't true, it's clear that his enemies--especially Europeans who want the bank presidency to go to one of their own--are now using this to force him out of the bank. They especially dislike his anticorruption campaign, as do his opponents in the staff union and such elites of the global poverty industry as Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development. They prefer the status quo that holds them accountable only for how much money they lend, not how much they actually help the poor.

Equally cynical has been the press corps, which slurred Mr. Wolfowitz with selective reporting and now says, in straight-faced solemnity, that the president must leave the bank because his "credibility" has been damaged. Paul Wolfowitz, meet the Duke lacrosse team.

The only way this fiasco could get any worse would be for Mr. Wolfowitz to resign in the teeth of so much dishonesty and cravenness. We're glad the Bush Administration isn't falling for this Euro-bureaucracy-media putsch. Mr. Wolfowitz has apologized for any mistakes he's made, though we're not sure why. He's the one who deserves an apology.


http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009948

[Buck Laser]

Opinion Journal is about as far to the right as the mainstream media go, and it's pretty damned far. How about you find a more centrist medium, then I'll pay some attention to it.

[Caravaggio]

Opinion Journal is about as far to the right as the mainstream media go, and it's pretty damned far. How about you find a more centrist medium, then I'll pay some attention to it.


Of course you only pay attention to the left wing propagandist like Al Franken and the rest of the MSM that BLEAT 1984 agiprop!

[Kallisti]

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=55237

-Pat Buchanan

Barracks language edited out, Tommy Franks once referred to the Pentagon's No. 3, Doug Feith, as "the dumbest guy on the planet."

It now appears Gen. Franks' honorific better applies to Feith's boss, the Pentagon No. 2, Paul Wolfowitz. For a man once hailed as the brightest of the neocons, Wolfie has behaved with a stupidity born of the arrogance of power.

Hailed in 2003 as architect of the Iraq victory, Wolfowitz, by late 2004, was being singled out as the bumbler of postwar planning and the man most responsible for what Gen. William Odom was already calling the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history.

With the roster of U.S. dead and wounded rising, Wolfie was looking for a place to hide. George Bush, who had heeded his cawing for war on Iraq from the first hours after 9-11, took pity. And more than pity. Bush made him president of the World Bank, the post to which Robert McNamara retreated after seven years at the Pentagon plunging us into another war, a war we later learned McNamara had come to believe we could not win.

Now, president of the World Bank is not your average sinecure. The job commands a munificent salary, tax-free. Nor does it require Senate confirmation, where Wolfowitz might have had to explain his role in deceiving us into war.

Nor is that all. The job consists of flying first-class around the world, dining in palaces, hobnobbing with the Davos crowd, and doling out billions to Third World dictators and despots. For Wolfowitz, it was a heaven-sent chance to rebuild his ravaged reputation. And he blew it.

A few weeks in Eden, and Wolfie went straight for the apple tree. From memos unearthed by the Financial Times, he gave bank officials specific instructions on the care and feeding of his romantic interest, a mid-level Libyan bank bureaucrat by the name of Shaha Riza.

Warned by the bank ethics committee he was to have no role in deciding Shaha's salary, Wolfie brushed the ethics rules aside.

He ordered Xavier Coll, bank vice president for human resources, to assign Riza to the State Department and raise her salary by some 50 percent, to $193,000 today, tax-free. She would take home more than Condi Rice. Coll was then directed to assure that Riza receive annual pay hikes of 8 percent and be put on a glide path to the highest position of any civil servant at the bank. By 2010, she would be making $245,000, tax-free.

And what has been Wolfowitz's big cause at the bank? Fighting corruption.

According to the Washington Post, Wolfowitz also had super-agent Robert Bennett negotiate a pay raise to $400,000 for him, equal to that of President Bush, only tax-free. He then brought over two Bush aides from the White House and installed them "in senior positions and rewarded them with open-ended contracts and quarter-million-dollar, tax-free salaries, despite their lack of development experience."

As this spilled out into the press, Wolfowitz, by week's end, was barely hanging on to his job. But Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the West Wing were behind him. In the GOP of Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham, this doesn't qualify as sleaze.

Well, let Wolfie stay on as poster boy of Bush ethics, and let the nation decide whether they wish to continue with this crowd in 2008.

But there is a larger issue than the love of Wolfie for Shara. That is the systematic looting of our country by parasites who are paid the world's fattest public salaries, working in Washington, supposedly to alleviate the suffering of the world's poorest people.

Europe was in ruins in 1945, and there was a need for a World Bank to lend reconstruction money to prostrate nations. But Europe and East Asia are prosperous today, the world is awash in investment capital, and foreign aid is a proven failure.

Why do we continue to subsidize jumbo salaries for foreigners to shovel huge dollops of our tax dollars down the same ratholes year after year?

This is not 1945. America is no longer the world's greatest creditor. She is the world's greatest debtor. In 2006, our current account deficit hit $857 billion. Beijing sits atop a mountain of $1 trillion in reserves. Japan sits on $850 billion. U.S. reserves are pitiful.

Why, when the government is deeper in debt than ever in our history, is this Congress borrowing billions every year to send to the least competent, most corrupt regimes on earth? Why has the World Bank not been shut down, its 10,000 overpaid employees dismissed – or the whole thing deeded over to Beijing or Tokyo? Let them play world banker to deadbeat nations. They've got the money. We don't anymore. Whatever happened to the movement of Goldwater? What happened to the Party of Reagan? Weren't we once going to put a stop to all
this?

[Buck Laser]

Opinion Journal is about as far to the right as the mainstream media go, and it's pretty damned far. How about you find a more centrist medium, then I'll pay some attention to it.


Of course you only pay attention to the left wing propagandist like Al Franken and the rest of the MSM that BLEAT 1984 agiprop!

Al Franken's a part of the MSM? Who knew?

[Caravaggio]

Opinion Journal is about as far to the right as the mainstream media go, and it's pretty damned far. How about you find a more centrist medium, then I'll pay some attention to it.


Of course you only pay attention to the left wing propagandist like Al Franken and the rest of the MSM that BLEAT 1984 agiprop!

Al Franken's a part of the MSM? Who knew?


The model for the MSM typical liberal..


http://premium1.uploadit.org/crazyspin77/stuartSmalley.jpg

[Buck Laser]

Opinion Journal is about as far to the right as the mainstream media go, and it's pretty damned far. How about you find a more centrist medium, then I'll pay some attention to it.


Of course you only pay attention to the left wing propagandist like Al Franken and the rest of the MSM that BLEAT 1984 agiprop!

Al Franken's a part of the MSM? Who knew?


The model for the MSM typical liberal..


http://premium1.uploadit.org/crazyspin77/stuartSmalley.jpg


Actually, I like this pic of Al. But that doesn't have anything to do with the topic of this thread. As I recall, your attempts to divert the thread to Sandy Berger didn't work, either. Maybe you should play in the minors for awhile before you get knocked down too many times here.:P