My head is spinning with all this World Bank Riza/Wolfie crap - I will post a some interesting articles (some that have appeared in older posts already), and then add my personal commentary to this post later on ~ the proverbial Shakespearean tangled web got nothin' on this ubertwangled story....
Notes on Shaha Ali Riza
Also note: there is only ONE picture of this woman available on the whole internet.
I find that very odd.
Axis of Soros
The men and motives behind the World Bank coup attempt:
Mark Malloch Brown spoke Monday to a crowded auditorium at the World Bank's headquarters, warning that the bank's mission was "hugely at risk" as long as Paul Wolfowitz remained its president. Only hours earlier, news leaked that a special committee investigating Mr. Wolfowitz had accused him of violating conflict-of-interest rules. A coincidence? We doubt it.
Mr. Malloch Brown, remember, was until last year Kofi Annan's deputy at the United Nations. In that position, he distinguished himself by spinning away the $100 billion Oil for Food scandal as little more than a blip in the U.N.'s good work, and one that had little to do with Mr. Annan himself. Last week, Mr. Malloch Brown was named vice president of the Quantum Fund, the hedge fund run by his billionaire friend George Soros. A former World Bank official himself and ally of soon-to-be British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr. Malloch Brown would almost surely be a leading candidate to replace Mr. Wolfowitz should he step down. Not surprisingly, Gordon Brown cold-shouldered Mr. Wolfowitz at a recent meeting in Brussels.
The bank presidency would be a neat coup for Sir Mark, and not just because the post has heretofore gone to an American. He also stands for everything Mr. Wolfowitz opposes, beginning with the issue of corruption. Consider Mr. Malloch Brown's defense of the U.N.'s procurement practices.
"Not a penny was lost from the organization," he insisted last year, following an audit of the U.N.'s peacekeeping procurement by its Office of Internal Oversight Services. In fact, the office found that $7 million had been lost from overpayment; $50 million worth of contracts showed indications of bid rigging; $61 million had bypassed U.N. rules; $82 million had been lost to mismanagement; and $110 million had "insufficient" justification. That's $310 million out of a budget of $1.6 billion, and who knows what the auditors missed.
Mr. Malloch Brown also made curious use of English by insisting that Paul Volcker's investigation into Oil for Food had "fully exonerated" Mr. Annan. In fact, Mr. Volcker's report made an "adverse finding" against the then-Secretary-General. Among other details, the final report noted that Mr. Annan was "aware of [Saddam's] kickback scheme at least as early as February 2001," yet never reported it to the U.N. Security Council, much less the public, a clear breach of his fiduciary responsibilities as the U.N.'s chief administrative officer. Mr. Malloch Brown described the idea that Mr. Annan might resign as "inappropriate political assassination"--a standard he apparently doesn't apply to political enemies like Mr. Wolfowitz.
Mr. Malloch Brown never made any serious attempt to reform the U.N. beyond the cosmetic, while doing everything he could to block the real reforms proposed by Americans Christopher Burnham and former Ambassador John Bolton. He was, however, energetic when it came to lecturing Americans about what they owed the U.N., such as joining the "reformed" Human Rights Council (whose only achievement to date has been to castigate Israel), pursuing a "new multilateral national security," and otherwise empowering the likes of Mr. Malloch Brown, his multilateral mates and their tax-free salaries.
Views like these help explain why Mr. Malloch Brown is in such favor with Mr. Soros, who has publicly suggested the U.S. will need a "de-Nazification" program to erase the taint of the Bush Administration. So close are the two that Mr. Malloch Brown lives in a suburban New York home owned by Mr. Soros. Mr. Malloch Brown says he pays market rent, though reporting by the New York Sun's Benny Avni disputes that. In any case, it's safe to assume that Mr. Soros's widely published views are close to Mr. Malloch Brown's somewhat more guarded ones. So it's not surprising that many on the World Bank staff would cheer Mr. Malloch Brown: He's perfect for an institutional culture in which "progressive" thinking goes hand-in-glove with a tolerance for corruption. That culture has been on vivid display in the Euro-coup against Mr. Wolfowitz. This weekend the committee investigating the claims dropped 600 pages in the president's lap and told him he had 48 hours to respond--in direct violation of World Bank staff rule 8.01, 4.09, which states that "the amount of time allowed a staff member to comment [on an investigative report] . . . will not be less than 5 business days." Following protests from Mr. Wolfowitz's lawyer, the committee gave him 72 hours.
This is the same kangaroo court that last month leaked its guilty verdict to the Washington Post before Mr. Wolfowitz even had a chance to plead his case. Our sources who have seen the committee's report tell us it is especially critical of Mr. Wolfowitz for daring to object publicly to the committee's methods and thereby bringing the bank's name into disrepute. The Europeans running this Red Queen proceeding prefer that they be able to smear with selective leaks without rebuttal.
Mr. Malloch Brown warned on Monday that, if Mr. Wolfowitz stayed as president, European countries might withhold funding from the next financing round for the bank's International Development Association. We hope he's right, though we know few European finance ministers who aren't eager to throw good money after bad. Still, it's a remarkable bit of chutzpah for the man who downplayed corruption at the U.N. to seek the ouster of the man who has fought to reduce corruption at the World Bank.
If the Bush Administration now abandons Mr. Wolfowitz as he faces a decision from the bank's board of governors, it will not only betray a friend but hand the biggest victory yet to its audacious enemies in the George Soros axis.
Official statements of Shaha Riza and Paul Wolfowitz
Statement by Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank Group 4/12/07
World Bank Justice
Wolfowitz's resignation offers a window into a corrupt institution
World Bank Jobbery
More evidence the Wolfowitz accusers chose to ignore
CHENEY OPENS WORLD BANK TO IRAN
THAT from THIS OSOZ POST which includes much on Shaha Riza
Deal is offered for chief's exit at World Bank
"Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled Monday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank's next chief, but only if Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said."
[SNIP]
The Wolfowitz connection: Anwar Ibrahim’s hand in Shaha Riza’s transfer
By K.S. Usha Devi
18 May, 2007
KUALA LUMPUR: Paul Wolfowitz pulled many strings to set up his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, with a cushy job outside the World Bank, according to US press reports. Was Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, a long-time friend of the beleaguered bank president, one of them?
On Oct 1 last year, as chairman of the Foundation for the Future, Anwar wrote a letter to Robin Cleveland, Wolfowitz’s counsellor at the World Bank, asking for Riza to be transferred from the State Department to the foundation.
That move raised her pay by 36 per cent from US$133,000 (RM454,000) to US$193,590.
Wolfowitz had arranged her transfer to avoid a potential conflict of interest since Riza was a World Bank employee with whom he had a romantic relationship.
But last month, the World Bank began investigating allegations that Wolfowitz broke bank rules in handling Riza’s promotion and huge pay hike.
Malaysia’s former deputy prime minister was not mentioned in relation to Riza’s transfer until the scandal broke, when media reports quoted his letter to Cleveland.
Anwar and Wolfowitz had a long-standing friendship that went back 20 years to when Wolfowitz was the US ambassador in Jakarta in the late 1980s, said Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, special assistant to Anwar.
Wolfowitz spoke out for Anwar when he was jailed in 1998. After his release in 2004, Anwar went to Germany to seek treatment for a back problem and Wolfowitz, then the US deputy secretary of defence, flew over to visit him.
And in 2005, Anwar, a former finance minister, had supported Wolfowitz’s appointment to the World Bank.
According to Nik Nazmi, Anwar believed Wolfowitz was capable of doing the job as he had a passion for eradicating poverty. Anwar was also appointed consultant to the World Bank in the areas of governance and accountability.
Anwar told Bloomberg this month that the onus was on Wolfowitz to explain the salary raise for Riza.
"He has to really explain and they have to see whether the increase in terms of remuneration was commensurate with the services," he said.
Nik Nazmi added that when Anwar wrote the letter, he followed the appropriate rules and guidelines detailing Riza’s transfer to the foundation:
"As far as he (Anwar) was aware, he went through the proper channels to ask for Ri- za’s transfer to the foundation."
He did not confirm whether Wolfowitz had recommended Riza for the position and had asked Anwar to write the letter.
"The foundation board will issue a statement pertaining to Riza’s transfer to the foundation as soon as possible," Nik Nazmi said.
The foundation was launch- ed in December 2005 by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ministers from the Middle East and Europe, reportedly with a seed grant of US$35 million, to promote democracy and reform in the Middle East and North Africa.
According to the Washington Post, the board has held only two meetings since then.
Malaysia's Former Premier Makes Peace With George Soros
Associated Press
December 15, 2006 2:35 p.m.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia's former leader Mahathir Mohamad on
Friday buried the hatchet with George Soros, saying he now accepts
that the U.S. financier wasn't responsible for the 1997 Asian
financial crisis.
Mr. Mahathir met with Mr. Soros for the first time since the financial
crisis made them bitter foes, and declared at a press conference that
he accepts the billionaire financier's claim he wasn't involved.
[Mahathir Mohamad]
"Mr. Soros said he is not involved" in the currency speculation that
triggered the financial crisis, Mr. Mahathir told reporters after a
more than one-hour meeting. "I accept that," he said.
Mr. Mahathir has for nearly a decade accused Mr. Soros of wrecking the
region's economies through currency speculation. He had also said that
the attacks on the Malaysian economy were part of a Jewish conspiracy
against Muslim nation. Mr. Soros is Jewish.
[SNIP]
FYI: Party Advisor: Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim
FYI: A group of NGOs and opposition parties then formed the Malaysian People Justice Movement (GERAK), before Reformists chosing its own NGO, the Social Justice Movement (ADIL).
Fellow travellers on path to crisis
By Eoin Callan in Washington
At about noon on March 21 2003, the US launched the first full-scale bombing of Iraq, ordering about 1,700 sorties and firing more than 500 cruise missiles.
Sometime during that day, amid the frenzied activity at the Pentagon, an e-mail was sent with an order originating in the office of Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy secretary of defence, to hire Shaha Riza, a World Bank employee.
The e-mail marked a moment – when the fate of Mr Wolfowitz, Ms Riza and the bank became inextricably intertwined.
The details of how Mr Wolfowitz and Ms Riza first became romantically linked are somewhat obscured by a non-disclosure agreement with his estranged wife, but it is thought to have followed his separation.
Mr Wolfowitz acknowledges that by the start of the Iraq war he had a “close personal relationship” with Ms Riza, an outspoken advocate of women’s rights and democracy in the Middle East.
Officials said that departmental records confirm Mr Wolfowitz showed a “personal interest” in the contract to send Ms Riza and three other consultants to Iraq to advise on postwar state-building.
E-mails sent by Pentagon staff at the time state there was “interest from Wolfowitz on down” and that the “E-ring” – or outer ring of the Pentagon, where the leadership is located – was “screaming” for immediate action on the contract.
Bea Edwards, of the Government Accountability Project, said: “The e-mails regarding Riza reflect a dependence on a very small circle in shaping Iraq’s reconstruction that was characteristic of war planning.”
In that circle, Ms Riza clearly stood out. Aided by a strong network of contacts, proficiency in several languages and degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford, Ms Riza moved easily both in Washington cocktail parties and marginalised women’s groups in the Arab world.
As a secular Arab woman who supported US policy in the Middle East she had a special appeal to the neo-conservatives ascendant in the Bush administration at the time. “She was a star,” says an administration official. He described her as a fellow traveller in the “wither Iraq project” that was coalescing around Mr Wolfowitz.
The deputy defence secretary was the leading proponent of a doctrine of US power based on military might and radical democratic reforms. The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was a first step in the vision shared by Mr Wolfowitz and Ms Riza.
The e-mails highlighting Ms Riza’s place in the reconstruction planning are contained in a copy of a Pentagon investigation launched after President George W.?Bush announced the appointment of Mr Wolfowitz to head the World Bank in 2005.
The appointment was controversial because of his close identification with an Iraq strategy that was already failing. It also offered a chance for him to work with Ms Riza to fulfil their shared ambitions to enact reforms consistent with US foreign policy.
The Pentagon probe was started when press reports about his relationship with Ms Riza “triggered recollection by auditors” from the department who sought to establish whether he “used his public office for the private gain” of his partner. The probe cleared him but the interest shown by the Pentagon auditors underlined the potential for others to see conflicts of interest.
At the World Bank, Mr Wolfowitz attempted to head this off by offering to recuse himself from personnel decisions involving Ms Riza but insisting on professional contact at the institution.
It came as a shock to both of them when the ethics committee at the bank insisted she be seconded or placed in an outlying department. “I thought he should have fought the decision by the ethics committee,” Ms Riza said in testimony released this week.
In response, Mr Wolfowitz cut himself off from the bank’s legal counsel and ordered the head of human resources to do the same as it was arranged for Ms Riza to be seconded to the State department to work on promoting democracy in the Middle East.
The gold-plated secondment package subsequently approved by Mr Wolfowitz exceeded the terms recommended by the bank’s ethics committee – and was not shared with the bank’s chief lawyer or the committee.
As the details of this secret deal trickled out in blogs and newspapers, including the Washington Post, it triggered outrage internally.
Robert Bennett, Mr Wolfowitz’s lawyer, says bank staff disliked Mr Wolfowitz because of the “baggage” he brought with him from the Iraq war. Many bank staff said in interviews that they regarded him with deep suspicion on his arrival. But others, especially senior management, say they backed his bid to make anti-corruption and governance a hallmark of his presidency.
The upper echelons of the bank had continued to support the president despite steps that angered rank-and-file staff, including hiring a coterie of Republican aides and making a controversial appointment of a corruption investigator.
“I relied much too long on advisers who came in with me from the outside for managerial functions,” Mr Wolfowitz said this week.
But it was only after details of his role in directing the terms of Ms Riza’s secondment were published in the Financial Times last month that Graeme Wheeler, his deputy, stood up at a meeting of bank vice-presidents and told Mr Wolfowitz he should go.
As a special panel was convened to investigate his conduct, people close to the board said they were also moved by disclosures in the FT that a managing director hand-picked by Mr Wolfowitz had attempted to water down policy on contraception and climate change.
The board was also swayed by reports from bank staff in developing countries that the leadership crisis was undermining the credibility of the institution and leaving them open to ridicule.
Five former Latin American finance ministers identified with the so-called Washington Consensus market-oriented reforms of the 1990s signed a letter calling on the bank’s president to resign. This week 37 out of 39 country managers called for a swift resolution of the crisis.
The revelations about interference in family planning policy resonated in particular with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who has led European resistance to a diplomatic offensive by the US to protect Mr Wolfowitz, according to people close to her.
In the wake of a damaging report by the special panel this week, the personal support of Mr Bush and Mr Cheney failed to win round key European allies.
In the White House on Wednesday the case was made that US influence within the bank was worth preserving and that the price was Mr Wolfowitz’s departure.
People close to the deliberations said the administration was divided over whether a presidency weakened by the war should expend precious political capital on saving a leadership that would be severely damaged.
Wolfowitz turns on Shaha Riza
Paul Wolfowitz has been using his lawyer Robert Bennett, and other "friends", to point fingers at everyone around him in a desperate and unseemly attempt to divert attention from his own role in the Shaha Affair.
After pointing fingers at ethics committee chairman; Ad Melkert, former general counsel ; Roberto Dañino ,outgoing HR vice president Xavier Coll, bank staff, excutive directors, Europe ,and what he now calls `Ambiguous' World Bank Rules ( see Here, Here, and Here). Today he finally turned on his girlfriend; Shaha Riza.
In an interview with NewsWeek, Robert Bennett, Wolfowitz' lawyer and spokesman says:
" It was Riza herself who pressed Wolfowitz to impose the generous terms of her new posting, according to Bennett. “She said she worked up the numbers, not Mr. Wolfowitz. She was outraged that she had to leave,” says Bennett."
In another telling part of the article, Michael Hirsh writes:
"Riza, says the longtime friend of the couple, is “very temperamental, very self-righteous, and very critical of the bank. It was amusing at first; then, it got aggravating after a while. You walk in the door admiring this Islamic woman who is very smart, and who was against the worst practices of the religious Islamic world. She had everything going for her. But I found her greedy in terms of power.”
~ A Washington source ~ May 04, 2007
Wolfowitz Hires Former Clinton Lawyer
April 23, 2007
He's defended Bill Clinton and the Duke lacrosse players, and now Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom's Robert Bennett is going to bat for another lightning rod: World Bank boss Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz has faced a staff revolt and an investigation by the bank's board into allegations he gave a girlfriend who worked at the bank a 36 percent raise — in violation of bank rules. Bennett says Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense and an architect of the Iraq War, is facing political attacks from opponents of the Bush Administration. `I've handled hundreds of conflict of interest cases, and this is a `nothing' case,'' Bennett said in a telephone interview with Bloomberg. ``The scandal has been created'' by people who oppose Wolfowitz, he said.
INTERVIEW WITH WOLFOWITZ 5/28/04
INTERVIEW WITH WOLFOWITZ 8/1/03
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