Will The Wolf Survive?

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Wolfowitz Pays Arab Gal $200,000 Per Year To Boink Him

World Bank boss and Neocon sociopath Paul Wolfowitz has given his Arab girlfriend $61,000 in raises for a job she actually left years ago — to work for Elizabeth Cheney at the State Department!

The girlfriend of the married Wolfowitz, Shaha Ali Riza, now earns $193,590 per year from the World Bank — that’s more than Condi Rice makes as secretary of state. And she apparently doesn’t even pay taxes, since she’s not an American.

Wolfowitz, who has the morals and dignity of a feral dog, finally put out a memo today taking “full responsibility” (he’s not quitting) for brazenly stealing money from the world’s poor to pay for his adulteress. Will the World Bank’s board will fire him later this week?
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Well let's hope so.. Damn, I knew Bono should have taken that job. :wink:
Where was this article published? Not disputing anything, but I was never comfortable with Wolfowitz at all, much less heading up the world bank. Geez, even back when it happened it made me flinch.
 
Will the Wolf Survive?

Bank staff asks Wolfowitz to resign

By JEANNINE AVERSA AP Economics Writer News Fuze
Article Launched:04/12/2007 07:11:12 PM PDT

WASHINGTON- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged Thursday that he erred in helping a close female friend get transferred to a high-paying job, and said he was sorry.

His apology didn't ease concerns among the bank's staff association, which wants him to resign.

The growing controversy has overshadowed major development meetings this weekend and is raising fresh questions about whether Wolfowitz will stay on the job. The White House, however, expressed confidence in the embattled bank president.

At issue are the generous compensation and pay raises of a bank employee, Shaha Riza, who has dated Wolfowitz. She was given an assignment at the State Department in September 2005, shortly after he became bank president.

"In hindsight I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations," Wolfowitz said. "I made a mistake, for which I am sorry."

The World Bank Group Staff Association is demanding that Wolfowitz step down.

"The president must acknowledge that his conduct has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group and has destroyed the staff's trust in his leadership," the association said Thursday. "He must act honorably and resign."

Wolfowitz said he met Thursday morning with the World Bank's board and that members were looking into the matter. He declined to discuss what actions, if any, the board could take.

"I proposed to the board that they establish some mechanism to judge whether the agreement reached was a reasonable outcome," he said, referring to Riza's transfer. "I will accept any remedies they propose."

Wolfowitz dodged a question about whether he would resign over the flap. "I cannot speculate on what the board is going to decide," he said.

A World Bank spokeswoman would not comment on what range of options the board could consider or when it would finish its deliberations.

The White House voiced its support for Wolfowitz.

"Of course President Wolfowitz has our full confidence," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "His leadership is helping the bank accomplish its mission of raising living standards for poor people throughout the world. In dealing with this issue, he has taken full responsibility and is working with the executive board to resolve it."

The Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group, estimated Riza's salary at $193,590 as a result of the job transfer and pay raises. The group says she was paid by the World Bank and remains on the bank's payroll. The World Bank would not comment on Riza's compensation, citing confidentiality concerns.

"I take full responsibility for the details," of the job transfer, Wolfowitz said. "I did not attempt to hide my actions nor make anyone else responsible," he said.

The job change was made, he said, to avoid a conflict of interest when he took his post at the World Bank, where Riza already worked.

World Bank rules bar employees from supervising anyone with whom they had a personal relationship.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9558497

"As an international organization, the World Bank and its president and senior staff cannot go around the world lecturing governments about corruption, malfeasance, nepotism, cronyism, favoritism and at the same time manifest those same practices at the bank itself," she said.

The head of the World Bank Staff Association on Thursday called on Wolfowitz to step down. After a meeting of the association in Washington, Alison Cave, the group's chair, released a statement saying that Wolfowitz's conduct "has compromised the integrity and effectiveness of the World Bank Group and has destroyed the staff's trust in his leadership. He must act honorably and resign.
 
Is Wolf good for Africa?


World Bank may target family planning

Repeated absence of references to birth control in internal reports alarms women's health advocates.
By Nicole Gaouette, Times Staff Writer
April 19, 2007

WASHINGTON — Under beleaguered President Paul D. Wolfowitz, the World Bank may be scaling back its long-standing support for family planning, which many countries consider essential to women's health and the fight against AIDS.

In an internal e-mail, the bank's team leader for Madagascar indicated that one of two managing directors appointed by Wolfowitz ordered the removal of all references to family planning from a document laying out strategy for the African nation. And a draft of the bank's long-term health program strategy overseen by the same official makes almost no mention of family planning, suggesting a wider rollback may be underway.

The World Bank has traditionally championed birth control and other methods of family planning as a key strategy to improve women's health and economic status.

The controversy has raised worries among some bank officials and health advocates that the Bush administration's conservative stance on family planning issues may be seeping into the institution.
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Cosatu on Wolfowitz: 'Told you so'

by Donwald Pressly; Mail & Guardian (South Africa); April 18, 2007

Cape Town, South Africa -- The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has called for the resignation of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz "not just because of his abuse of his office to promote, and give a huge pay rise to, his girlfriend, but because of his consistently anti- working class and anti-poor policies", Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said on Tuesday.

Wolfowitz, who visited South Africa recently, has left it to the World Bank board to consider his position, but he does not wish to resign.

However, Craven said in a statement that Wolfowitz's corrupt promotion of his partner "typifies the morality of the capitalist system of which he is such an enthusiastic supporter".

South Africa's biggest labour federation noted that it had said at the time of Wolfowitz's appointment in June

2005 that he "embodies all the worst features of the international financial institutions -- the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Like them, he has been dedicated to entrenching the power of big business and multinational corporations, at the expense of the workers and the poor."

It said at the time that Wolfowitz would do nothing to make the World Bank more accountable or responsive to the needs of the world's poor countries.

Craven said Cosatu endorses the International Trade Union Confederation's (ITUC) call for "proper transparency and democracy at the [World] Bank and the International Monetary Fund".

He noted that the confederation has said both institutions "are facing a crisis of legitimacy, and must respond by increasing their accountability to member and client countries and the public at large".
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Sliming Wolfowitz: The World Bank president did nothing wrong

By Christopher Hitchens
slate.com, April 17

"We know no spectacle so ridiculous," wrote Macaulay about the vilification of Lord Byron, "as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality." Change the word "ridiculous" to "contemptible," and the words "British public" to "American press," and you have some sense of the eagerness for prurience, the readiness for slander, and the utter want of fact-checking that have characterized Paul Wolfowitz and Shaha Riza as if they were not only the equivalent of Byron seducing his half-sister, but as if they were financing their shameless lasciviousness out of the public purse and the begging bowls of the wretched of the earth.

I ought probably to say at once that I know both Wolfowitz and Riza slightly, and have known the latter for a number of years. Anyone in Washington who cares about democracy in the Muslim world is familiar with her work, at various institutions, in supporting civil-society activists in the Palestinian territories, in Iran, in the Gulf, and elsewhere. The relationship between the two of them is none of my damn business (or yours), but it has always been very discreet, even at times when Wolfowitz, regularly caricatured as a slave of the Israeli lobby, might perhaps have benefited from a strategic leak about his Arab and Muslim companion.

It is scarcely Riza's fault that she was working in a senior position at the World Bank when Wolfowitz was gazetted as its president. And quite frankly, if I were he, or indeed she, I would have challenged anyone to make anything of it. Of very few other people working there could it so obviously be said that she held her post as of right, and on merit. But we all think we know about "the appearance of a conflict of interest," and so I would like you to read what the general counsel to the bank, Robert Danino, wrote to Wolfowitz's lawyers on May 27, 2005. His letter opens like this:

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.

Instead of settling the matter, this disclosure and plain offer on Wolfowitz's part has become the source of all his woes. It was decided by the board of the bank and the "ethics committee" that the board established, that for no reason except a private relationship, Riza had to leave her work at the bank. Feminists and opponents of the glass ceiling should begin paying attention here.

Perhaps uneasily aware that their decision involved an injustice to someone who was highly esteemed and shortlisted for promotion (and whose job was located a long way away from any decision-making by the bank's president), the ethics committee suggested that an upgrade at Riza's new job might be in order, perhaps also "as part of settlement of claims," to be accompanied by "an ad hoc salary increase." On July 27, the committee's chairman, Dutch politician Ad Melkert, sent a memo to Wolfowitz assuring him 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."

What could be easier to understand? A highly qualified individual, compelled to leave her job for reasons entirely unconnected to her performance—and forced also to undergo bureaucratic scrutiny of her private life —is at least to be recognized with pay and promotion. The bank's ethics czar, the same Ad Melkert, wrote to Wolfowitz on Oct. 24, 2005, to say 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." Four weeks later, a personal note was added to this sanctimonious and official one. "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."

Well, I must say I hope so, too. She must indeed be happy to be dragged through the press as if she were some Levantine concubine or nontyping "secretary," feathering a love-nest with ill-gotten gains. But that's nothing to what Riza would have got if she had insisted on sticking to her original job, as was her right. The same is true of Wolfowitz: damned whatever course of action he takes. I read over the weekend that a certain bank "staffer" accused him of cutting off aid to Uzbekistan after that country had canceled the presence of United States bases on its soil. The innuendo was clear: The sinister neocon uses the World Bank to punish any dissent from imperialism. Well, the American breach with President Islam Karimov's kleptocratic and megalomaniac regime came after a few massacres of civilian protesters and the exposure of institutional torture. Do you believe that Wolfowitz would have got better press if he had insisted on keeping up the aid payments after all that?

Aha, you say, but why did Wolfowitz take so long to release these nonincriminating internal memoranda? Who acts so defensively if they have nothing to hide? I have no private information to impart here. But it could be that two grown-up people, both with previous marriages and with growing children, did not feel much like undergoing yet another round of "disclosure." For the sake of apparent propriety, they had already had to submit to some rather exorbitant demands. That's just my guess. But I didn't choose to say anything until I had seen the relevant papers, which are clear and conclusive. I wonder if any of the ravenous pseudo-moralists will feel even the slightest blush once they have done the same.
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:shrug:
 
Wolfowitz's World Bank deputy tells him to quit


Richard Adams in Washington
Thursday April 19, 2007



Paul Wolfowitz's tenure as president of the World Bank may be decided today by the bank's governing board, after he was abandoned by the Bush administration and faced a revolt led by his own deputy.

When Mr Wolfowitz asked a meeting of senior staff yesterday what he could do to repair faith in his leadership, he was told bluntly to resign by Graeme Wheeler, a managing director of the bank and one of two deputies to the president.


Mr Wheeler - a well-respected New Zealander appointed to his post by Mr Wolfowitz last year - told the meeting of 30 vice-presidents at the bank's headquarters in Washington that Mr Wolfowitz should go for the good of the organisation. Several vice-presidents said they agreed with Mr Wheeler.

Mr Wolfowitz is said to have replied that he didn't think his resignation would be in the bank's best interests, and that he had no intentions of going.

Sources inside the bank have described the situation as "civil war". The Bank's staff association has called for Mr Wolfowitz to resign, and a group of senior staff have threatened to quit if he stays. Other staff are planning to wear blue ribbons to show their support for the calls for his resignation.

The World Bank's board, made up of 24 directors representing the bank's member countries, has cancelled its previous agenda for today to discuss Mr Wolfowitz's personal intervention to secure pay increases and benefits for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, shortly after he took over as head of the bank.

Yesterday the Bush administration suggested it was prepared to see the board sanction Mr Wolfowitz - a signal that its patience is wearing thin.

After reiterating that President Bush had "full confidence" in Mr Wolfowitz, a White House spokesman said: "I think the effort of the World Bank board should be to get to the facts, treat it with fairness and think of the long-term effectiveness of the institution."

The careful formulation used by the White House indicated that it was washing its hands of Mr Wolfowitz, a bank source said.

Another sign that his defenders are giving up came in a damning editorial published in a staunchly Republican newspaper. The Washington Times called on Mr Wolfowitz to step down as his leadership had been "rendered ineffective" by the scandal.

"Mr Wolfowitz has lost the reputation for ethical impeccability on which the World Bank relies," the newspaper wrote.

Although many other newspapers, including the Financial Times and the New York Times, have already called on Mr Wolfowitz to go, the Washington Times is an insight into the thinking of conservative Republicans, who were delighted at Mr Wolfowitz's appointment by President Bush in 2005.

In recent days evidence has emerged that a contractor for the US government working in Iraq said in 2003 that it was ordered to hire Ms Riza as a consultant on governance issues. The order was issued by Douglas Feith, then undersecretary of defence. Mr Wolfowitz was deputy secretary at the Pentagon at the time, and Mr Feith's boss.
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Update: Tuesday, April 24, 2007. 1:24am (AEST)
Former colleagues urge Wolfowitz to quit

A group of senior former World Bank employees has urged beleaguered head Paul Wolfowitz to resign, saying he can no longer be an effective leader.

Mr Wolfowitz is battling to remain in his job after admitting helping his partner win a promotion and a pay rise.

More than 40 World Bank officials, including 18 former vice-presidents, have published their call in an open letter to the Financial Times newspaper.

They say Mr Wolfowitz has "lost the trust and respect of bank staff".

The former senior officials warn that Mr Wolfowitz will "preside over a rudderless hulk" if he remains in office.

Mr Wolfowitz has apologised for his mistake and has vowed to stay on.
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Are all these people just bias against him, the Bush Administration?
 
Wolfowitz Panel Finds Ethics Breach, Officials Say

World Bank Board Could Act on Monday

By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 28, 2007


NEW YORK, April 27 -- A World Bank committee investigating president Paul D. Wolfowitz has nearly completed a report that it plans to give the institution's governing board, concluding that he breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend, three senior bank officials said Friday.
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breached ethics???


and still the Bush Administration supports him:huh:
 
As Bush invoked yet again in the Charlie Rose interview:

"He serves at the pleasure of the President. I named him."



Ok, so you named him. And what exactly does that say about you, then?

Jon Stewart is absolutely right. This administration would rather us believe them to be incompetent fools than give us any insight into how they operate.
 
"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."


wolfowitz.jpg
 
Angry Wolfowitz in four-letter tirade

Richard Adams in Washington
Tuesday May 15, 2007

An angry and bitter Paul Wolfowitz poured abuse and threatened retaliations on senior World Bank staff if his orders for pay rises and promotions for his partner were revealed, according to new details published last night.

Under fire for the lavish package given to Shaha Riza, a World Bank employee and Mr Wolfowitz's girlfriend when he became president, an official investigation into the controversy has found that Mr Wolfowitz broke bank rules and violated his own contract – setting off a struggle between US and European governments over Mr Wolfowitz's future.

Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

The remarks were published in a report detailing the controversy that erupted last month after the size of Ms Riza's pay rises was revealed. The report slates Mr Wolfowitz for his "questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest", saying: "Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply."

The report brushed off Mr Wolfowitz's defence that he thought he had been asked to arrange Ms Riza's pay package, observing that "the interpretation given by Mr Wolfowitz ... simply turns logic on its head".

The investigators have sent their completed report to the bank's governing board, containing a string of withering criticisms of Mr Wolfowitz's behaviour and casting doubt on his ability to continue running the bank, a multibillion-pound international agency with 12,000 staff based in Washington.

According to the report, Mr Wolfowitz's actions "had a dramatic negative effect on the reputation and credibility" of the bank.

It concluded that "the damage done to the reputation of the World Bank group" should lead the bank's board to "consider whether Mr Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to ensure that the bank continues to operate to the fullest extent possible".

It also said: "Mr Wolfowitz's contract requiring that he adhere to the code of conduct for board officials and that he avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent, [was] violated."

Despite the weeks of turmoil within the bank, Mr Wolfowitz may still keep his job if the US government is prepared to stick by him.

Mr Wolfowitz still enjoys support from the Bush administration, where he served as deputy defence secretary at the Pentagon during the invasion of Iraq.

Yesterday vice president Dick Cheney defended Mr Wolfowitz, saying: "Paul is one of the most able public servants I've ever known .... I think he's a very good president of the World Bank, and I hope he will be able to continue."

The US treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, was yesterday said to also be drumming up support for Mr Wolfowitz, while European governments increasingly despair of US intransigence in allowing Mr Wolfowitz to hang on.

The angry comments attributed to Mr Wolfowitz came from damning testimony by Xavier Coll, head of human resources at the bank, who provided investigators with his notes of a meeting with Mr Wolfowitz last year. The notes directly contradict Mr Wolfowitz's assertions that the details of Ms Riza's treatment were properly shared with senior bank officials.

In March last year, when a mention of Ms Riza's secondment outside the bank to avoid rules about partners was first published in the magazine US News & World Report, an angry Mr Wolfowitz accused Mr Coll of leaking the information.

According to Mr Coll's notes: "At the end of the conversation Mr Wolfowitz became increasingly agitated and said that he was 'tired of people ... attacking him' and 'you should get your friends to stop it'. Mr Wolfowitz said, 'If they fuck me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too'," naming several senior bank staff he felt were vulnerable.
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Dick Cheney defended Mr Wolfowitz, saying: "Paul is one of the most able public servants I've ever known .... "
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Well given some of the other people they've appointed, this may be true.
 
where are the comments by Bush testifying that Wolfowitz is, indeed, "a good man."

and thusly absolving him from anything. because "good men" don't do bad things. you know, like dirtball Al Gonzales. he's a "good man."

i love how it's all supposed to be so reassuring.
 
I love how the World Bank with they way they handled this is trying to tell countries to not be corrupt and root out corruption.:| Wolfowitz has not only had a negative impact upon the internal workings of the World Bank but upon it's reputation as an organization.

And this guy will get another cushy job somewhere else with his buddies and no biggie. The world is a fucked up place at times.

Has Bush appointed any key persons who weren't fuck ups? Great judge of people, this president.

They should reevaluate the way they choose the head of the World Bank. It is hugely flawed.
 
trevster2k said:

They should reevaluate the way they choose the head of the World Bank. It is hugely flawed.
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The U.S., as the largest shareholder in the World Bank, selects the president. That's why every WB president to date has been an American. It's unfortunate that the selection can be so political.
 
ntalwar said:


The U.S., as the largest shareholder in the World Bank, selects the president. That's why every WB president to date has been an American. It's unfortunate that the selection can be so political.
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I know and that's wrong. The Western World preaches democracy yet there is little democracy in the process. It's a political appointment, cronyism. The UN isn't even a democratic place. It's all bullshit.
 
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