Embattled World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is expected to fight to keep his job after an investigation found he put his personal interests above bank rules and jeopardized the very mission of the development lender.
The former US deputy defense secretary is accused of personally arranging a lucrative pay-and-promotion package and transfer to the State Department for his companion and fellow bank employee, Shaha Riza.
He is due to appear before the bank's 24 executive directors at 9pm this evening to explain his actions.
'Again we support him, but we also know, and he has said, that he is willing to be sitting down with members of the World Bank to try to figure out the proper way to serve the best interests of the institution,' White House spokesman Tony Snow said this evening.
Snow, who unreservedly has voiced support for Wolfowitz, commented after the release last night of a damning World Bank report.
In the 52-page report, an investigatory panel named by the executive board to examine accusations against Wolfowitz concluded that he had violated the terms of his contract, the bank's code of professional conduct and three staff rules.
Shortly after Wolfowitz's arrival at the helm of the bank in June 2005, Riza, who worked as a bank communications specialist, was transferred to the US State Department and received a generous pay increase, deemed in excess of bank standards by the panel, while still on the bank's payroll.
The bank's ethics committee had recommended the transfer of Riza but in supervising it and arranging for salary hikes and promotions Wolfowitz violated rules, the ad hoc panel found.
'The ad hoc group concludes that the president placed himself in a conflict of interest situation,' they wrote.
However, the panel recognized one of Wolfowitz's arguments in his defense: that the ethics committee had failed to provide him clear guidance.
'It should have been drafted in language that would not leave open the possibility of misinterpretation', the report had said.
