LAWFUEL – The Law Newswire – The Washington Post reports today that beseiged World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz sent his lawyer, DC attorney Robert Barnett, to negotiate the terms, seeking more than a dozen amendments to the standard contract that had served World Bank presidents for decades
Barnett has represented a number of high profile media and political figures and, according to the Post, did not mince words in his meeting with the Bank.
The amendments? Special dispensation for the books he would write and the paid speeches he planned to deliver, and a salary on par with that of the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who was traditionally more highly paid.
A final sticking point, the Post reported, conveyed in all capital letters in an e-mail to then-general counsel Roberto Dañino, was Wolfowitz’s insistence that he must retain “professional contact” with Shaha Riza, an employee of the bank’s Mideast department and his live-in girlfriend — something that the executive board later determined was a clear conflict of interest under personnel rules.
