As reported by Deep Insider, Monique Barbut was practising some “travails” to get the “dragon-lady” Robin a cushy job at GEF. Guess with only 18 months to go for the Bush Administration, his political followers are not welcomed, as ” must have employees “, with open arms in some corporations and dear Robyn does need a job. However, according to Al Kamen from Washington Post, Robin won’t be an ilk of Monique.
“The job apparently would have meant a two-step demotion in rank as well as a substantial — perhaps six-figure — decline in salary, according to the Government Accountability Project, which has been exposing various misdeeds and shortcomings at the bank.”
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Amid reports that the Volker Panel’s audit of Suzanne Rich Folsom’s INT is likely to be a whitewash, the Government Accountability Project is doing its own audit. more…
Now that disgraced about-to-be-former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is about to draw his next-to-last paycheck from the World Bank, you’d expect that the cronies that helped him crash and burn would be planning their own departures.
Not so for “the other woman” Robin Cleveland, whose imperious and superficial role as Senior Counsellor (and whose rich pay of $275,000 tax-free dollars was a damn sight better than what she pulled down as a “third level official” at OMB) is scheming to join the Global Environment Facility. Or “burrowing in” as they say in the US government.
Robin is conniving with Monique Barbut, the lovely and charmant Chief Executive of the enormous global fund for the environment that is housed in the Bank “investing in our planet”, to keep her excessive and unwarranted salary for another two years as a “team leader”
Have neither of them any shame? more…
Paul Wolfowitz’s surprising–and seemingly ineffective–character reference for his protégé Scooter Libby, read to a captivated court at Libby’s sentencing hearing, should remind us of the unfinished HR business at the Bank. Nominee Robert Zoellick launches his worldwide listening tour and charm tour, but let’s not forget the housecleaning that everyone’s anticipating to get them, and the post-Wolfowitz Bank, back to work.
Reread Voice of Reason’s May 14 “watch what Shaha Riza and Paul Wolfowitz do, not what they say.” This insightful piece during the drama put some context around Shaha’s career at the Bank. Her contribution was not, ahem, quite as Paul Wolfowitz believed, and would have had the Board believe. His handling of his lover’s career was the incident that helped unravel his deeply flawed presidency.
Shaha is desperately negotiating her return to the Bank now that the conflict of interest–Wolfowitz–is about to be removed. It’s not finished, though, until the Bank and State complete their investigations into Bank employee Shaha’s jaunt to Iraq, apparently as an employee of defence contractor SAIC.
It now seems that it was apparently Shaha advising Wolfowitz not to resign and how to handle the Board and others so aggressively right up to the end. We always thought it was Robin Cleveland (banished to a broom closet but still very much on Bank premises) but it was just as much Shaha all the way along. more…
The Editors at the Wall Street Journal continue to be the most reliable source of comic relief in this whole Wolfowitz-Zoellick episode. Today they’re warning of another World Bank “putsch” — their term for what happened to Wolfowitz — this time against Suzanne Rich Folsom from the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT). more…
May 22nd 2007 | Deep Insider | More on Mr W's cronies | Comments Off
World Bank General Counsel has broken a staff rule prohibiting staff from political interference in member countries. Along with other former EU foreign ministers, she signed a letter to the International Herald Tribune on May 16 “To the Turkish people from their European friends” more…
