The International Monetary Fund’s executive board met Friday to consider whether Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva should keep her job but merely adjourned and issued a statement saying a decision would be made “very soon.”
Georgieva has been linked to a scandal involving China and an annual report that ranked countries as investment destinations, dating back to her previous stint as CEO of the World Bank. The turmoil at the two organizations comes just days before their annual meetings begin in Washington, which top officials from most of the world’s countries will attend.
“The Executive Board remains committed to a thorough, objective, and timely review,” the IMF’s governing body said in the statement. “While the Board has made significant progress in its assessment, it agreed at today’s meeting to request more clarifying details with a view to very soon concluding its consideration of the matter.”
Pressure has been growing on the embattled IMF head since last month, when an independent report from a law firm, WilmerHale, found that staff at the World Bank was pressured by senior management to alter key data to improve the rankings of China and other countries. The bank’s influential “Doing Business” report, which has now been discontinued, was used to rank nations based on their business environment.