Mata Hari One question troubling the inquiring minds at worldbankpresident.org is who leaked the Riza pay rise documents (not to mention those troublesome board minutes to Fox news back in January)? No smoking gun yet, but some interesting theories making the rounds inside the Bank...

THEORY 1: MATA HARI

You're a bit worried that someone has the details on the girlfriend's raise, so you want to find out who, given that the large increase was already leaked to the Board (and blown off) and now there's an egregious annual raise on top of that. Why are you so worried? Well, maybe you were worried about being discovered, and being accused of having given bad advice.

In parallel, Paul Wolfowitz realises he's being badly served on other matters, VPs are grumpy, you've had problems with not knowing what's going on, others you've brought with you are hearing how bad things are. You're worried, so you take a copy because you were involved, and now you might be in trouble.

Of course, why were you so keen for Shaha to get such a good deal and a quick exit back in September 2005 after the Ethics Committee's thorough review of the conflict of interest stuff and your personal, sole-sourced choice of the legal counsel to advise the Bank on the terms of Shaha's sweet deal. Maybe you didn't want her around, too. And why might that be? Two of you advising on Bank business? Hmmmm, who's closer? Of course, having been involved in making funds available to DoD for all that democracy building work in Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion, you might well know how she got there, and how the contracting should of worked. After all, you oversaw all that money coming from OMB to DoD. And now there was a girlfriend going to Iraq.

This one might explain why Wolfowitz was reportedly willing to sacrifice one of his inner sanctum in a recent desperate attempt to cling to power.

THEORY 2: THE POLDER MODEL

Another possibility is that I was involved in the disposition of the first deal, and I was having my own problems at another international organization and used contacts in the Bank to lay hands on what really happened. Or maybe I had been forced out for having been told to butt out in the first place. Or maybe I wanted to be sure that my role in the leak to Fox News didn't get fully investigated, because "I know what you directed" and without me, by mid-March 2007, you can't run the place. So drag your feet about agreeing to the Board's hiring counsel to investigate after OJ Simpson turns up nothing.

Any theories of your own? Tell us at contact@worldbankpresident.org

Jeff Powell ~ April 20, 2007

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