[quote=“TainanCowboy”]I’m really not much of a ‘conspiracy theorist’ devotee, but when it comes to the circle of intrigue revolving around George Soros, it makes the late Armand Hammer look like a piker.
Time for a thread of Soros and his Shadow Party. Leading off with his involvement in the Wolfowitz/World Bank episode currently being acted out.
[quote]Axis of Soros
The men and motives behind the World Bank coup attempt.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
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.
opinionjournal.com/editorial … =110010050[/quote]
The fun is just beginning.[/quote]
On the other hand, there’s this:
[quote]Documents circulating at the World Bank suggest that Paul D. Wolfowitz, the bank president, understood that his role in ordering a pay increase and promotion for his companion in 2005 might be seen as a conflict of interest but insisted on proceeding anyway, bank officials who are critics of Mr. Wolfowitz said Sunday.
The officials, speaking on the eve of a fateful week for Mr. Wolfowitz’s efforts to remain head of the bank, said testimony and notes that Xavier Coll, vice president of human resources, provided to a bank committee investigating the matter supported the charge that Mr. Wolfowitz was aware of engaging in favoritism. One said the documents were “devastating” to Mr. Wolfowitz’s case.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because the bank bars disclosure of evidence in the case, the officials said Mr. Coll’s testimony and notes have become central to the charges Mr. Wolfowitz is fighting.
The officials did not provide the documents. It was unclear whether Mr. Wolfowitz’s supporters would read the same information differently and insist that it buttressed his insistence that his actions were encouraged by others and subsequently cleared by them.
Robert S. Bennett, Mr. Wolfowitz’s lawyer, in an interview Sunday evening disputed that any such evidence existed and suggested that there might be some misinterpretation of the evidence. Mr. Bennett has reviewed extensive amounts of the testimony in the case.
“Because of the instructions of the World Bank board, I am very uncomfortable talking about the evidence of the case,” he said. “But I will say that a careful review of all the documents shows, if anything, that there was no bad faith on Mr. Wolfowitz’s part.”
He added that the evidence from Mr. Coll and other officials shows that Mr. Wolfowitz “agreed that he should not be involved” in setting the arrangements for his companion, but that the ethics committee “wanted him to get a concrete, practical result in a very sticky situation.”
At the heart of the dispute between Mr. Wolfowitz and his accusers is what each side claims to have known about the other’s actions and intentions. The decision to transfer Shaha Ali Riza, Mr. Wolfowitz’s companion and a bank employee, was made after an initial discussion by both sides, although Ms. Riza hired legal representation to fight the transfer.
A former bank official, Ad Melkert, acknowledged that he told Mr. Wolfowitz to take care of a compensation package for Ms. Riza. But Mr. Melkert said that, contrary to what the bank president maintains, Mr. Wolfowitz went behind bank officials’ backs to arrange the terms of the promotion and salary increase, which was large, as Ms. Riza was transferred to the State Department.
Mr. Melkert represented the Netherlands on the bank board and headed its ethics committee. He is now at the United Nations Development Program.
Mr. Coll, a Spanish physician and public health professional who has worked for several years at the World Bank, has declined to comment about the charges against Mr. Wolfowitz since they broke into the open last month.
A third accuser, Roberto Daniño, former general counsel at the bank and former prime minister of Peru, has also testified that Mr. Wolfowitz went behind his back on the Riza matter. Bank officials say that with Mr. Wolfowitz’s word pitted against these three officials, it would be hard for the bank board not to side with the accusers.
One of the bank officials who spoke Sunday said that one document appeared to suggest that Mr. Coll had told Mr. Melkert and Mr. Daniño that he was told by Mr. Wolfowitz not to tell them about the details of the compensation package for Ms. Riza.
Many bank officials have said that Mr. Wolfowitz was under pressure from Ms. Riza and her lawyers to resolve the matter quickly.
“Coll was in a very uncomfortable situation,” said a bank official who spoke Sunday. “For me, it is clear that Wolfowitz knew what he was doing, and that what he was doing was a violation of staff rules.”
A special committee investigating the allegations of misconduct will transmit its findings to the larger 24-member board of the bank on Monday. Also to be transmitted is a recommendation on how or whether Mr. Wolfowitz should be censured.
The bank board will listen to Mr. Wolfowitz’s testimony on Tuesday and decide what to do on Wednesday.[/quote]
nytimes.com/2007/05/14/washi … ref=slogin
and this. . .
[quote]The World Bank executive board has concluded that the bank’s president, Paul D. Wolfowitz, broke ethics rules in engineering a hefty pay raise for his girlfriend, and plans to try to end his tenure next week, senior bank officials said yesterday.
Board members do not want to vote to fire Wolfowitz, the officials said, since that might provoke a rupture with the bank’s largest shareholder, the United States. Instead, they are inclined to adopt a resolution saying they have lost confidence in him, hoping that will persuade him to resign.
Wolfowitz has said he granted his companion, Shaha Riza, a pay raise and promotion on advice from an ethics board at the bank. His attorney, Robert S. Bennett, declined yesterday to say what Wolfowitz would do if the board voted to express no confidence in him.
Wolfowitz yesterday was completing a written response to the accusations against him. He has been invited to appear before the board Tuesday, and the no-confidence vote could come soon after, the bank officials said.
Jeopardizes ability to raise funds
They said the resolution will probably assert that Wolfowitz’s continued tenure jeopardizes the bank’s ability to raise funds for its campaign to eradicate poverty. Board members are betting that a strong expression of dissatisfaction will persuade the Bush administration to withdraw its support and urge Wolfowitz to step down, ending the leadership crisis that has engulfed the bank for seven weeks.
“There is a general sense that that would be enough,” said a senior bank official briefed by members of the board, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic sensitivities. “They agree that he definitely broke the rules and they have no confidence in him. What they are doing now, informally, is figuring out what to do, what language to use.”
Another official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, described the proposed resolution as something like a parliamentary vote of no confidence. “In most parliamentary settings, that’s the end,” he said. “You step down.”
While it has been clear for two weeks that a special investigative committee within the board had concluded that Wolfowitz breached ethics rules, only this week have deliberations revealed that most of the 24-member executive board has embraced those findings and is working to remove him, the officials said.
Continued White House support
The White House remained firm in calling for Wolfowitz to stay, with Vice President Cheney counseling him to fight on, said a senior administration official, who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has in recent weeks lobbied finance ministers in Europe to support Wolfowitz, though he has “gotten little traction,” the administration official said. On Thursday, Paulson called Wolfowitz “a dedicated and committed public servant” in an interview with Bloomberg News, expressing admiration for “what he has done at the World Bank.” Wolfowitz has made fighting corruption in poor countries a major focus of his two years at the bank.
Though prominent officials from Europe to Latin America have publicly called for Wolfowitz to go, and though the board has the power to fire him, a decisive vote would break sharply with the bank’s consensus-minded culture, while presenting nettlesome questions of procedure and diplomacy. Never in the six decades of the World Bank’s existence has the board removed the institution’s leader, who, by tradition, is selected by the U.S. president.
In pursuing an expression of no confidence in place of a decisive vote, board members were working under instructions from the governments they represent, with major European countries intent on avoiding a fresh imbroglio with the Bush administration, senior officials said. European governments fear they could lose their right to name the head of the World Bank’s sister institution, the International Monetary Fund.
But one of the bank officials said board members were also feeling pressure from bank staff members to end the crisis, which has effectively paralyzed the institution. “Bank staff sees them as far too beholden to their capitals,” the bank official said.
Given opportunity to make his case
Board members were carefully parsing recent statements from the Bush administration, noting that Paulson and President Bush have emphasized that they want Wolfowitz to be given a fair hearing on the ethics controversy. Some board members have taken that to mean the White House will accept the board’s final judgment if Wolfowitz has been given a full opportunity to make his case.
Late Sunday, a seven-member executive-board committee completed a report described by those who have seen it as highly critical of Wolfowitz’s conduct. It asserts that he breached his contract, undermined the reputation of the bank and broke ethics rules in arranging a job transfer and pay raise for Riza.
Wolfowitz has argued that he sought and followed the advice of the bank’s ethics committee in finding another job for Riza so as to avoid supervising her, while assenting to the pay raise as compensation for the disruption to her career.
Both the chairman of the ethics committee and a former bank general counsel told the committee that Wolfowitz did not disclose details of the raise.[/quote]
msnbc.msn.com/id/18624022/
and this. . .
[quote]May 12 (Bloomberg) – World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz readied his response to conflict-of-interest charges as opponents gathered support to oust him from the helm of the biggest aid agency.
Wolfowitz’s attorney, Robert Bennett, said yesterday he would submit a rebuttal to findings by a panel of directors that the bank chief had violated ethics rules when he arranged a pay- and-promotion package for his companion. Meanwhile, two bank officials said a majority of the 24 directors were prepared to vote against him.
European nations including France, Germany and the Netherlands have called for a quick resolution of the monthlong impasse. They have said the controversy has undermined the credibility of the bank, which under Wolfowitz campaigned against corruption in developing countries that receive $23 billion in annual aid from the agency.
When you head an organization that's a multilateral institution, and you make corruption a very strong battle cry of the institution, like Caesar's wife you must be aboveboard,'' said Devesh Kapur, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the author of a history of the World Bank.
Otherwise you will be dysfunctional.’’
The panel of seven directors investigating Wolfowitz will send its report to the full board, along with the bank chief’s rebuttal. Wolfowitz has been invited to appear before the board on May 15 to make his case in person.
An increasing number of bank directors are convinced Wolfowitz violated bank rules and that the breach was serious enough to justify his removal, according to the two bank officials, who declined to be identified because the deliberations are supposed to be secret.
No-Confidence Vote
One option being considered by the board is a vote of no confidence in Wolfowitz, said one of the officials.
The U.S., the only nation to publicly say Wolfowitz should stay in office, repeated its support for the former deputy defense secretary, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005.
``The president continues to strongly support Paul Wolfowitz and would like him to continue as World Bank president,’’ White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters yesterday.
Board members, who have the authority to fire or reprimand Wolfowitz, answer to the bank’s 185 member governments. The U.S. has the most clout, with more than 16 percent of the total votes, followed by Japan with almost 8 percent, and Germany, France and the United Kingdom, with about 4 percent each. Other board members represent groups of countries with shares of 5 percent or less.
`Smear Campaign’
European governments have been Wolfowitz’s most vocal critics. Wolfowitz, 63, has rejected staff demands for his resignation, saying he’s been the victim of a smear campaign'' and that charges against him are
bogus.’’
Unfortunately for him, I think there's a lot of unfairness,'' said David Gergen, a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a former aide to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
His days are numbered,’’ he added. ``The weight of public opinion is going to force him out by next week.’’
Wolfowitz has maintained a schedule that took him to an education conference in Brussels last week and will see him in Potsdam, Germany, to attend a meeting of the Group of Eight industrial nations two days after his scheduled appearance before the bank’s board.
Transfer
The panel of directors determined that Wolfowitz violated ethics rules when he arranged the deal under which Shaha Riza, 52, was transferred to the State Department in 2005 to avoid a potential conflict of interest.
Riza was given a 36 percent pay raise, to $180,000, with guarantees of future increases of 8 percent a year, while remaining on the bank payroll. Wolfowitz argued that he was only carrying out the orders of the bank’s ethics committee when he arranged the deal.
To contact the reporters on this story: Christopher Swann in Washington at cswann1@bloomberg.net ; William McQuillen in Washington at bmcquillen@@bloomberg.net[/quote]
bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= … refer=home