KEY POINTS:
New Zealander Graeme Wheeler, a World Bank managing director, has unwittingly found himself a central figure in the fate of one of the world's most powerful men, Paul Wolfowitz.
Wolfowitz, one of United States President George W. Bush's closest advisers, is under siege, with worldwide calls for his resignation from the leadership of the powerful aid agency.
He has been revealed to have had inappropriate involvement in his Libyan girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza getting a highly paid job in the US State Department.
Ironically, one of his objectives as bank President was to cut down on corruption, graft and cronyism. He has been criticised for bank appointments of other supporters.
Wheeler was not the whistle blower who revealed the Wolfowitz influence in his girlfriend's appointment, but he did publicly call on him to resign.
In doing so, the man New Zealand colleagues remember as a straight shooter took a stand in line with good old fashioned public service ethics.
Wolfowitz appointed Wheeler, a former Treasury official, as one of his top deputies last year only under pressure from the Europeans, when his own preference was rejected.
The position had been vacant for five months as various options from the two factions were rejected.
Wheeler, an economist, was chief executive of the New Zealand Treasury's Debt Management Office from 1993 to 1997, before joining the World Bank to serve as the director of financial products and services and later treasurer.
From 1990 to 1993, he was Treasury's macro-economic policy director and also served as New Zealand's senior representative to the OECD in Paris.
In many ways the politics and processes of Washington have come up against New Zealand public service ethics in the shape of Wheeler.
"He's somebody I have the highest respect for," said his former boss at the Debt Management Office, Pat Duignan.
"His actions do reflect the ethics of the Treasury and the New Zealand public service.
"He's the sort of guy who would reluctantly, but determinedly, declare his position when it became appropriate it was necessary to do so.
"Graeme wouldn't stir for the stake of stirring, but having considered the matter and having taken a proper look at it he would speak his mind when asked."
Duignan, now a consulting economist, said it would not be Wheeler's style to go behind Wolfowitz's back.
"I wouldn't paint him as a whistle blower. It wasn't whistle blowing."
Nor would he have shrunk from telling Wolfowitz face-to-face what he believed was the correct course.
He would have recommended resignation in the interests of the World Bank's mission to assist the world's poor and to fight corruption, Duignan said.
"Graeme would have felt more acutely than some on the World Bank staff that they set a good example.
"I think it's a case of him effectively saying, 'given the mission of the organisation you can't sully it, and unfortunate though it might be, you have to lead by example'. That's, I imagine, how he would have put it."
Former National Party leader and Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash dealt with Wheeler at the DMO and agreed he played with a straight bat.
"I have a high regard for him. He was a very competent guy," he said.
"He may have just felt this was a step too far. While I don't see him as a whistle blower, I don't see him as not one either.
"My experience of him was that he ... was a person of integrity."
That view was backed by Roger Kerr of the Business Roundtable, who worked with Wheeler at Treasury in the 1970s and 1980s.
"I would certainly have expected him to bring a public service ethic to the job, he's that kind of guy. He's an understated, unassuming character, not flamboyant."
Kerr said Wheeler had risen to one of the highest positions held by a New Zealander in an international organisation, barring political appointees.
On an internet blog called worldbankpresident.org, where Wolfowitz's future holds centre stage, blogger Jeff Powell touted Wheeler as a worthy replacement for the top job.
He wrote that the appointment of Wheeler as Acting President was a sensible way forward.
"Graeme Wheeler should step in as Acting President until such time as the Americans and the Europeans can agree on an open, transparent and merit-based selection process for Wolfowitz's successor," Powell said.
"My source says Wheeler is a capable pair of hands to guide the bank through challenges on the immediate horizon."
Duignan said even if Wolfowitz stayed on, the Europeans would have trimmed his wings.
He may be only staying to execute a more graceful exit.
Asked if Wheeler's actions had been career limiting, Brash quipped:
"Whose career. It may be career-limiting for Wolfowitz."
Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary who was branded the architect of the US invasion of Iraq, was appointed World Bank President in 2005, at Bush's insistence.
His appointment to head the world's most important aid agency was bitterly opposed by European nations, who saw him as a "neoconservative", divisive force.
His tenure has become a geopolitical power struggle between the Bush Administration and Europeans opposed to the invasion of Iraq, so much so that it has paralysed the bank.
"The World Bank is vertically irreconcilable divided," wrote Richard Adams of the Britain's Guardian newspaper.
The Bush Administration, backed by some media such as the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, claimed moves to get Wolfowitz to resign were a European plot.
His girlfriend had been working at the bank but its rules forbid a relationship between a staffer and a manager, so she had to go.
- NZPA
