Wolfowitz hires top lawyer
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has hired a prominent US lawyer as he fights to keep his job after arranging a generous compensation package for his former lover.
“I want to be sure that he receives appropriate treatment and fair treatment,” Robert Bennett, a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, said yesterday.
Bennett said he was retained on Saturday, a day after the World Bank’s board ordered a special panel to consider whether, among other things, Wolfowitz properly handled the promotion of Shaha Riza to a high-paying job at the State Department in 2005.
Wolfowitz, who has said he made a mistake and has apologised, said he got involved in Riza’s job transfer shortly after he took the helm with the hope of avoiding a conflict of interest.
“I’ve reviewed all the material – all the relevant material – and it is absolutely clear to me that he acted in total good faith in this,” Bennett said.
The bank’s staff association, former bank executives, some Democrat politicians, and aid groups want Wolfowitz to resign. Wolfowitz has been running the institution that fights global poverty for nearly two years.
“Mr Wolfowitz is not going to resign,” Bennett said. “He did not hire me to help him work out a separation agreement. He wants to do the job that he signed on for.”
A former federal prosecutor, Bennett is a seasoned trial lawyer who has handled various high-profile cases in criminal, civil and other matters for the past 35 years.
His previous clients include former President Bill Clinton; two former secretaries of defence, Clark Clifford and Caspar Weinberger; and more recently former New York Times reporter Judith Miller in the CIA leak investigation.
Documents released in the past couple of weeks showed that Wolfowitz had a direct hand in securing a State Department job for Riza in September 2005.
Before the transfer, Riza was a communications adviser in the bank’s Middle East department.
Riza remains on the World Bank’s payroll even though she left the State Department job in 2006 and now works for Foundation for the Future, an international organisation that gets some money from the department. “I have now been victimised” for agreeing to the arrangement, Riza said in a recent memo to the bank.
The World Bank board asked the special panel last week to look into Wolfowitz’s handling of Riza’s compensation package regarding bank rules and “conflict of interest, ethical, reputational and other relevant standards.”
The special panel is to make recommendations to the 24-member World Bank board. It is unclear what action, if any, the board will take. The board has been divided on the matter.
Bennett said he hopes he will have an opportunity “to make a presentation to them to prove beyond question that (Wolfowitz) acted in absolute good faith and in the best interests of the bank, which I’m absolutely convinced of.” He would not publicly discuss who is paying Wolfowitz’s legal fees.
The United States, the bank’s largest shareholder, has expressed confidence in Wolfowitz. But some representatives of European governments would like to see Wolfowitz go. Some Asian and African representatives have indicated some support for the embattled president.
Ulrich Wilhelm, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said of the Wolfowitz controversy: “The World Bank will find a solution that will correspond to its well known high principles.”
The German government said it was prudent to wait and see what action the World Bank’s board would take and distanced itself from earlier remarks made by its development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who suggested to the Financial Times Deutchsland that Wolfowitz should resign.
“My conclusion is that Wolfowitz should do the bank a service and take consequences for his actions,” she said. “The faster the better.”
