The World Bank's president on Tuesday dismissed as "frivolous" allegations by US lawmakers and academics that billions of dollars of bank funding were misused.
In his first public remarks since a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on May 13 that looked into corruption at multilateral agencies, James Wolfensohn said the World Bank was leading the fight against corruption in the development community.
"We have more investigators and more programs on corruption than I think the entire rest of the development community put together," he told reporters at a briefing on the bank's upcoming poverty conference in Shanghai, China, starting May 25.
"So the notion that we should be attacked on corruption is frivolous," he added.
He said research by Jeffrey Winters, an associate professor at North-western University, at the hearing that the World Bank had lost $100 billion on corruption was an "incomprehensible assertion that is not soundly based."
"I do believe that we should all focus on corruption but the bank is rated the No. 1 in the fight against corruption, so I cannot understand why someone is taking a shot at us when it's a thing I pride us most on," Wolfensohn said.
Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate committee, commended Wolfensohn for bringing more attention to corruption but said it remained a serious problem.
The Indiana Republican cited experts who calculate that between $26 billion and $130 billion of money lent by the Bank for development projects since its inception in 1946 had been misused.
In 2003, the bank distributed $18.5 billion in developing countries.
Wolfensohn said the motivation for the hearing "might be political," when asked if there was any basis for the hearing.
"I don't know where this comes from and the assertions are whimsical, but it could be politically motivated," he said.
Like other UN agencies, World Bank officials are not allowed to testify in public forums. But senior bank officials gave lawmakers a private briefing on the bank's work on corruption.
Wolfensohn said the bank had blacklisted around 150 companies and handed over suspected corrupt officials to authorities for criminal investigation.
"We're looking very carefully at ourselves and very carefully at the odd person who is trying to make a fast buck," he said.