Desk Report
Publish: 22 Sep 2021, 02:57 pm
IMF Execs Meets over Charges Boss Changed Data to Favor China || Photo: Collected
The International Monetary Fund's board of directors met
Tuesday over charges that its director, Kristalina Georgieva, pressured staff
in 2017 when she was the World Bank CEO to change data in a key ranking report
to paint China in a more positive light.
The board did not announce any immediate decision and said
it would meet again "soon."
"The IMF's Executive Board met today for an initial
briefing from the Ethics Committee on the matter related to Managing Director
Kristalina Georgieva's alleged role in the World Bank's Doing Business 2018 as
described in the Investigation's Report," the IMF said in a statement.
It added that the board "emphasized the importance it
attached to conducting a thorough, objective, and timely review and agreed to
meet again soon for a further discussion."
The board had already met with Georgieva, who denies the
charges, last Thursday and Friday, immediately after the investigation was made
public.
The independent investigation found that during her time as
World Bank CEO, Georgieva and then World Bank President Jim Yong Kim pressured
staff to change their methodology to allow China not to dip in the closely
watched rankings.
The investigation, carried out at the request of the World
Bank's ethics committee, had raised concerns about the loss of confidence in
international institutions.
The US Treasury said it was analyzing the report, whose
conclusions it considered "worrying."
US voices weigh the heaviest in the IMF executive board, which
chooses the organization's managing director, and the country also has a right
of veto.
Georgieva was appointed IMF managing director in 2019, and
the lender's member countries will "have to make a decision about whether
they're comfortable with her continuing in that role," Nobel laureate Paul
Romer said in an interview.
Romer, who was World Bank chief economist during Georgieva's
time there, criticized her for engineering what he described as a
"whitewash" of separate concerns he raised about the institution's
flagship Doing Business report.
The World Bank immediately announced that it would stop
publishing the report.
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