WASHINGTON, 30 March 2007 — In this town, no gossip is juicier than when it’s political -and news that World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is paying a close female friend a salary higher than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — certainly has raised eyebrows.
Shaha Riza, who’s been romantically linked to Wolfowitz for several years, has done exceptionally well in terms of salary in the last 18 months.
Riza, a British citizen who was born in Tunisia and raised in Saudi Arabia, worked as a communications adviser in the bank’s Middle East and North Africa department before she was transferred over to State Department to work with Karen Hughes’ public diplomacy office in September 2005, while remaining on the World Bank’s payroll — she left six months after Wolfowitz took over at the bank.
At the time, Wolfowitz’s only comment on the complaints was in a terse statement issued through a Pentagon spokesman. He said: “If a personal relationship presents a potential conflict of interest, I will comply with bank policies to resolve the issue.”
So, a solution to the problem was found — she was “transferred.” Before leaving the World Bank, she was promoted to a managerial-level job, a rather rare appointment, according to a story in the Washington Post this week.
Just before being transferred over to State Department, she was promoted again, according to bank records obtained by the Government Accountability Project and given to the Post; figures indicate that before her promotion, she was earning $132,660.
Under bank rules, the highest raise she should have received in her new job would be $20,000, according to GAP’s calculation. Instead, she received a $47,340 raise, which bounced her salary up to $180,000.
But wait, the World Bank’s generosity did not stop there. This fiscal year, while all the time working at State, Riza received another raise of $13,500, which has her now earning $193,590, — $7,000 more than Secretary Rice.
The bank’s staff rules should have allowed only about half that amount — since she is at State and not at the World Bank, the GAP told the Post.
How did all this get leaked? Easy — influential, and unhappy, members of staff at the international organization have complained to its board that Wolfowitz, is so besotted with Oxford-educated Riza he cannot be impartial.
They even claim she played a key role in pushing the 60-something Pentagon official into the Iraq War. On top of this were claims that Wolfowitz’s former wife Clare once warned President George W. Bush of the threat to national security any infidelity by her husband could cause.
Riza, in her early 50s, joined the World Bank in 1997. She studied at the London School of Economics in the 1970s before taking a Master’s degree at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, where she met her future husband, Turkish Cypriot Bulent Ali Riza, from whom she is now divorced.
After they moved to America, she worked for the Iraq Foundation, set up by expatriates to overthrow Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. She subsequently joined the National Endowment for Democracy, created by President Ronald Reagan to promote American ideals.
Bulent Riza said his former wife started to “talk to Paul” about reforming the Middle East. And New Yorker magazine noted that a senior World Bank official “named Shaha Ali Riza” was an “influence”.
Recently, however, word is that the discreet couple is, well, no longer a couple.
There is no word, or confirmation, on why the couple has split up — but one can’t help but think that if the rumors are true that they are no longer together — earning that large salary would certainly help keep a former girlfriend...well, discreet.
