A Cloud Over Turkish Candidate’s Chances to Lead I.M.F.

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By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Published: May 19, 2011

LONDON — On paper Kemal Dervis would seem to be the perfect candidate to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as leader of theInternational Monetary Fund.

Currently a vice president at the Brookings Institution, he was Turkey’s economy minister from 2001 to 2002 and was widely credited with bringing Turkey out of a severe financial crisis by privatizing state assets and slashing budget deficits amid fierce political opposition.

He speaks fluent French, German and English and is a veteran of I.M.F.-style bureaucracies like the World Bank and the United Nations. Earlier this week, London bookmakers were giving Mr. Dervis the second-best chance to get the I.M.F. job after Christine Lagarde, the finance minister of France.

But, Mr. Dervis, it turns out, has a secret that could disqualify him from being considered for the job. Years ago, while a senior executive at the World Bank, he had an affair with a female subordinate who now works at the I.M.F., according to a person with direct knowledge of the affair.

This person’s account was confirmed by Stanislas Balcerac, a former World Bank staff economist who worked on the same floor with Mr. Dervis and the woman.

In a brief interview Thursday, Mr. Dervis declined to discuss the details of his personal life. But after Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s departure over allegations of a sexual assault, questions of past impropriety could be enough to hurt a candidate’s chance.

On Friday, after word of the affair was reported, Mr. Dervis issued a statement through Brookings saying, in part, “I have not been, and will not be, a candidate” for the I.M.F. job.

Mr. Dervis, 62, was not married at the time of the affair, but the woman was, according Mr. Balcerac, who says he bears no ill will toward either person. In fact, he praises Mr. Dervis as one of the brightest, most adept and bureaucracy-beating executives at the World Bank at the time.

“He was not your standard bureaucrat,” he said. He made “decisions quickly and was extremely dynamic.”

Indeed, the professional talents of Mr. Dervis are a reason he has been widely mentioned this week as a possible candidate for the top job at the I.M.F. He would represent a potential bridge between the European establishment from which the I.M.F. chief has traditionally been chosen, and the emerging-economy countries that are now demanding to play a bigger role in global financial institutions. Turkey, with its 9 percent growth rate last year and its ambition to become a major regional actor in the Middle East, would certainly fit that bill.

Most intriguingly, perhaps, Mr. Dervis is a close friend of George Papandreou, the prime minister of Greece, whom he has been informally advising over the last two years.

The two men became acquainted in 2001 when Mr. Dervis was in charge of the Turkish economy and Mr. Papandreou was foreign minister for his government. Since then, Mr. Dervis has provided counsel in a variety of ways.

He has been an active participant in Mr. Papandreou’s annual summer ideas conference held on different Greek islands each year. He has huddled with him at the Brookings Institution in Washington. And he has, insiders say, shared many late-night phone calls with the Greek prime minister.

And Mr. Dervis has many professional admirers.

“He is the man for the job,” said Dani Rodrik, an expert on globalization and development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. “He would be a truly meritocratic appointment.”

But Mr. Dervis said on Thursday that he was in no way prepared for this sudden burst of publicity. “Look, I have not put my name forward, nor has anyone called me about the job,” Mr. Dervis said. “I am flattered, of course, but that is all I can say at the moment.”

In his Friday statement, indicating he would not be a candidate for the I.M.F. post, Mr. Dervis said, “I am fully engaged in, happy with, and focused on my global work at the Brookings Institution and look forward to continuing my research and policy work, including work on Turkey.”

No doubt, the affair in question is very old news. Mr. Balcerac points out that years ago the culture at the World Bank was looser and it was not uncommon for senior executives to have affairs with those working for them.

All of this changed in 2007, when the World Bank had its own, more minor scandal: Its president at the time, Paul D. Wolfowitz, promoted a woman he was involved with.

The I.M.F. has not said publicly who it is considering to succeed Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

John Lipsky, an American, has taken control as acting managing director and while there had been an expectation that Mr. Strauss-Kahn would leave before his term ended in October 2012 to run for the French presidency, it is not clear what type of short list, if any, the fund board has drawn up.

Like Kofi, like Ban Nepotism returns to United Nations

By Judi McLeod

Canada Free Press

Original Source: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/328

Qualifiers bound to get you a “jammy job” at the high-handed, diplomatic immunity protected United Nations? Other than being a bureaucrat down to the core, it helps if you are mealy-mouthed, politically correct and good at hiding when challenging times demand decisions. Think Kofi Annan in Rwanda.

Well, as the French would say, the more things change the more things remain the same at the world’s largest bureaucracy.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s son, Kojo used Daddy’s name to get his green Mercedes sent back home to Ghana on the cheap, and somehow landed himself a job with a firm then connected to the Oil-for-Food scandal

According to UN watchdog Inner City Press, rookie UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s son-in-law Siddarth Chatterjee has been announced as his wife’s father’s chief of staff.

Inner City Press picked up “a small item” about this latest UN nepotism from the Washington Post and ran the gamut on it.

That’s Ban’s fancy footwork in the looking after the family department.

In the Getting by with a Little Help from my Friends Department, there’s Ban’s former colleague in the South Korean foreign ministry, Choi Young-jin, recently named Ban’s envoy to the Ivory Coast.

The UN, which relies more on the media communique than even the U.S. government, teaches all “spokespeople” how to handle embarrassing questions from the media.

“For weeks it had been rumored that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s son-in-law would get a high post with the UN in Iraq, and that Mr. Ban’s former colleague in the South Korean foreign ministry, Choi Young-jin, would be named Ban’s envoy to the Ivory Coast.” (Inner City Press, Oct. 19, 2007). “About the latter, Inner City Press asked Ban’s spokesperson Michele Montas, after hearing from Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo that the envoy had been mutually selected. Ms. Montas had no comment at the time. Then on October 18, the Choi appointment was announced, and the following morning’s Washington Post carried a small item noting that Ban’s Iraq envoy Steffan de Mistura is naming Ban’s son-in-law Siddarth Chatterjee as his chief of staff. There are stories behind each, portions of which we’ll endeavor to tell in this end-of-week column.

“On Friday Inner City Press asked Ms. Montas about Chattterjee’s appointment in Iraq, and she responded that it is strictly a matter between Mr. de Mistura and Chatterjee, that it is a lateral move and not a promotion, and that “we feel the publication of any information that increases the risk to any staff member and to the mission as a whole is not very helpful.”

”Inner City Press asked, “Are you saying that the Washington Post’s publication puts the mission at risk?”

“I’m saying what I said,” Mrs. Montas replied.

“An aside: Inner City Press often takes and presents UN Spokesperson Montas’ objections to the legitimacy of questions at face value. But in this case, we have reason to believe, and have decided to report, that the responsibility for the above-quoted dig at press freedom lies on the 38th Floor, and not the third (where the Spokesperson’s Office is housed). Apparently from the highest levels, attempts were made that this widely-rumored story not be published.

“But since it is journalistically legitimate, even imperative, to report on what some are calling possible nepotism in public institutions, security concerns would have militated (sic) against this assignment of the Secretary-General’s son-in-law to Iraq.

“`It’s a big world,’” as one source fearing retaliation put it, adding that Chatterjee was initially going to be promoted from P-5 up into the “D” ranks, but that it was decided to forego this for now, to present the move as lateral.

“The subtext to Ms. Montas’ statement that this was a matter between Mr. de Mistura and Mr. Chatterjee is that these fearful insiders report that Mr. de Mistura made the appointment in order to curry favor on the 38th floor, just as, the sources say, he previously hired the son of Kofi Annan’s close aide Iqbal Riza. What makes it unrealistic to expect this story not to be explored is that de Mistura was so recently given the Iraq envoy post.

“The new envoy to the Ivory Coast, Choi Young-jin, assumes a difficult position. The previous two envoys were essentially thrown out by president Gbagbo after they pushed to compliance with the elections time-table and spoke about corruption. While it is said that Gbagbo initially rejected the suggestion of Choi as the new envoy, his subsequently changed position leads many to question how assertive he will be about compliance with the revised elections time-line, to say nothing of corruption.”

The United Nations has proven it is the kind of place where, when the first sign of corruption raises its ugly head, friends are called in to investigate.

Paul Volcker, who headed up the Independent Inquiry Commission into the Oil-for-Food scandal, held a seat on Power Corp’s international advisory board. Power’s founding father, Paul Desmarais is a major shareholder and director of TotalFinaElf, the biggest oil corporation in France, which has held tens of billions of dollars in contracts with the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein--originators of the largest scandal in world history.

Meanwhile over at Turtle Bay, the age-old axiom “like father, like son” could have added, like Kofi, like Ban.