The New York Times reports that a special World Bank committee has ruled that bank president Paul Wolfowitz was guilty of breaking rules banning conflicts of interest when he arranged for a pay rise and promotion for his girlfriend and co-worker Shaha Ali Riza. Later this week, the bank board will vote on possible sanctions against Mr Wolfowitz. The bank president has said that his actions may have been ill advised, but insists he did not break any rules. On Monday, Mr Wolfowitz's top communications aid Kevin Kellems resigned, saying that "the current environment surrounding the leadership" at the bank made it "very difficult to be effective in helping to advance the mission of the institution." Mr Kellems was a close associate of the bank president when he was still deputy secretary of defense.

(Rnw.nl)

Wolfowitz believes that self-interest is the only interest and that he is above the rules that others need to follow.

He is a neo-con after all!

I am sure that the Wolfowitz puppet GW Bush will ensure that he parachutes into another influential high paid job.

Not that I don't love the chance to see Wolfowitz taken down a peg or two, but have a look at this Q&A of events.

It seems to indicate that he did consult the Ethics Committee on several occasions and they gave the green light to the movement to New York and the salary increases, affirmed in their email of 28 February.

Maybe the ethics committee made a misjudgement, but it certainly seems like Wolfowitz at least attempted to follow the straight and narrow on this and use the proper channels.

Of course, there's still the appointment of the other two associates, as well as bad handling by Wolfowitz of the whole thing, but perhaps he's not quite as guilty as many suspected?

Given his unpopularity (and arguable unsuitability for the job) it really wasn't surprising that everyone in Europe would jump at the chance to use it to make his position untenable, but I get the feeling it was blown out of proportion.

Edit: This opinion (written later) has the author's view on why the mistakes/rule breaches he made were so serious he had to go, despite obtaining what he thought was Ethics Committee approval.

[ 06-12-2007, 05:44 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

Interesting. So the Ethics Committee says, ah, it's alright, until somebody got their feathers ruffled, or maybe, if Wolf was really cracking down on corruption, got too close to somebody that was corrupt? Not like a criminal wouldn't commit a criminal act to get out of a crime. However, with the details in those two links, I think it more likely that somebody that didn't know all the details started whining, and somebody got tired of it.