Can World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz survive in his job?
Increasingly, there is speculation that he cannot. Wolfowitz, 63, is facing the biggest crisis of his career: a scandal involving promotions and pay hikes to his girlfriend that threatens his control of the world’s largest and most influential anti-poverty institution, which doles out some $20 billion annually in loans and grants to developing countries. After a week of shifting explanations by bank officials, a clearly-beleaguered Wolfowitz on Thursday announced at a Washington press briefing that he made “a mistake for which I am sorry” over his handling of a promotion and huge pay increases for bank staffer Shaha Riza, who had a romantic relationship with Wolfowitz that precedes his appointment to the bank’s helm in 2005. Wolfowitz declined to elaborate on what those mistakes were – but said he now regretted having been involved at all in her job-related negotiations at the bank. And, within hours of his apology, the bank’s ‘staff association,’ made up of half the bank’s 10,000 empl
