The World Bank’s employee organisation has questioned the promotion and pay raise of a female staffer it says is involved with bank president Paul Wolfowitz.
In a letter circulated internally to staff on Tuesday, the bank’s Staff Association demanded an explanation from Wolfowitz and the board of member countries for what it called ”violations of staff rules in favour of a staff member closely associated with the president”.
The relationship with Shaha Riza, a former senior gender specialist and senior communications adviser in the bank’s Middle East Department who had worked at the bank for eight years, became public when Wolfowitz took the helm in mid-2005.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for the board’s former ethics committee head, Ad Melkert, confirmed the committee advised Wolfowitz that Riza should be moved outside the bank, but left it up to management to determine the terms.
”In this case, it advised management that keeping the partner within the institution would be untenable but that a possible external solution should take into account the legitimate concerns about career advancement of the partner,” the spokesperson for Melkert, who is now associate administrator of the UN Development Programme, told Reuters.
The agreement was then negotiated among Riza’s lawyer, the bank’s former senior counsel Roberto Danino and vice-president for human resources Xavier Coll, a bank source said.
A senior bank official said Wolfowitz tried to remove himself from the matter but he was overruled.
”The president asked the board to be recused from any personnel decisions involving the staff member, but the board overruled him and over his objections instructed him to resolve the issue through an external assignment,” a senior bank official said.
Wolfowitz’s office on Wednesday officially asked the board to make public the communication between him and the ethics committee over Riza.
String of tensions
The issue is the latest in a string of tensions between Wolfowitz and the bank employees’ organisation that began soon after his arrival at the bank, accompanied by an inner circle of advisors who had worked for the Pentagon and White House.
Conflict grew when Wolfowitz appointed a woman with ties to the Republican Party to head his anti-corruption unit.
The appointments became a lightning rod for broader dissatisfaction with Wolfowitz, who has struggled to shake his association with the US-led invasion of Iraq.
In its latest protest, the Staff Association said Riza was assigned by the bank to the State Department to avoid a conflict of interest — when one partner supervises another.
She remained on the bank’s payroll, which is common practice for those on bank external assignment, while she has worked in the office of Karen Hughes, who oversees public diplomacy efforts for the State Department.
But the Staff Association said before Riza left for the State Department she was promoted to a position that would normally have been ”competitive, vetted and approved by the relevant sector board”.
”This promotion clearly does not conform to the procedures,” the Staff Association said.
It also said the promotion put Riza in a higher pay grade but the increase she received was more than double the amount allowed under staff rules.
Riza declined to comment. – Reuters