It is ironic that Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, has found himself under pressure, with his job on the line, for an apparent case of nepotism involving his girlfriend.

Some, of course, will insist that Mr. Wolfowitz's behaviour was corrupt and that he should be fired. Whatever decision the World Bank board eventually takes against him, perhaps this weekend, his reputation will have suffered. And if he stays, it will be from a weakened position that he will be able to lecture countries and their leaders, especially in the Third World, against corruption.

The whole affair is, in many respects, unfortunate. A year ago, Mr. Wolfowitz, a former deputy secretary of defence in the United States administration, launched a major anti-corruption campaign at the bank, which he joined the year before. Among his early impositions was the suspension of a $250 million loan to Kenya in the face of a major corruption scandal in that country.

Mr. Wolfowitz appointed an anti-corruption czar at the World Bank and encouraged staff to raise their concerns when they saw corruption on projects. Apparently, he was prepared for a difficult road to transformation.

"There has to be a lot of teething problems to go from a world where for 50 years the word 'corruption' wasn't uttered in this institution to actually doing something about it. It doesn't happen by snapping your fingers," Mr Wolfowitz told World Bank staff at the time.

There are many people around the world who might have been uncomfortable with Paul Wolfowitz, with a tone deemed imperious and for his past role as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy and a neo-con ideologue whose ideas helped to fashion events in Iraq. More people, though, believe that his position on battling corruption was fundamentally correct. They have seen too much money spent by too many institutions, with too little to show for it except the wealth of a few who could pocket huge sums of cash.

In the scheme of things, what Mr. Wolfowitz did appears to be small beer. When he left the Defence Department he caused to happen what, on the face of it, was a good thing. His girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a long-time World Bank employee in communications, was seconded to the State Department.

But the World Bank staff association complains that she has received rapid pay raises from the bank, outside the norm, jacking up her annual tax-free package to US$193,000. At State she is paid more than Condoleezza Rice. There is a whiff in the affair of the caricatured Third-World official, against whom Mr. Wolfowitz was campaigning.

Mr. Wolfowitz has apologised, saying he wished he had followed his original instincts and kept himself out of the negotiations concerning his girlfriend's secondment and salary. It, of course, should have been neither instinct or intuition that came into play then. It should have been clear cognitive reasoning that he faced a conflict of issue, just as he realised that conflicts could have arisen beingthe head of an institution at which Ms. Riza worked.

This, therefore, was not a mistake, but poor judgement on Mr. Wolfowitz's part. We, however, do not believe that it reaches the level endangering his job. But even if he leaves, the anti-corruption platform should remain.

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