France is planning to grant its backing to Kristalina Georgieva when the IMF’s 24 board members meet on Friday to assess whether they should retain the fund’s managing director following allegations challenging her ethics in her previous job at the World Bank.
But it was unclear on Thursday whether Paris’ support would help sway other European countries to settle a controversy that has hung over the multilateral lender for the past three weeks and threatens to cast a cloud over the IMF and the World Bank’s annual Washington DC gathering starting on Monday.
Several EU countries and the UK were waiting for any indication from the Biden administration over whether Georgieva had lost US support, according to people with knowledge of the discussions at the board.