The African Development Bank (AfDB) has appointed three eminent personalities from Ireland, Gambia and South Africa to a panel that will independently review its investigative committee report on whistleblower allegations against the bank’s embattled president Akinwumi Adesina.
They are chair of the elders and former Irish President Barrister Mary Robinson, former Gambia attorney general and Supreme Court Judge Hassan Jallow and former South Africa prosecution boss Leonard McCarthy, who also served as World Bank integrity vice president.
Adesina is seeking a second term at the helm of Africa’s biggest development finance institution and the African Union has endorsed his re-election. But a group of non-African shareholders, led by the United States of America has raised questions about the investigation by the Investigative and Ethics Committee which cleared Adesina of all the charges in the whistleblower report.
Adesina denied the allegations and the bank’s ethics committee cleared him but the United States, a shareholder with 6% voting rights in bank, questioned that decision. Now Robinson, Jallow and McCarthy have been trusted to review the investigation and the board of governors have given them two to four weeks to report back.
