(FreedomBeacon.com)- The leader of a major bank has been removed this week after details of an intimate relationship he had with one of his subordinates came to light.
On Monday, the Inter-American Development Bank’s governors voted to oust its president, Mauricio Claver-Carone, according to sources cited by Newsmax. Investigations done by the bank’s governors showed he was involved in an intimate relationship with someone at the company who was his subordinate.
IDB is the largest development bank in Latin America, and Claver-Carone is the first and only American to have ever served as its president over its 62 years in business.
The governors of IDB started voting on whether to remove their president last Thursday. It took them until Monday to finally reach the quorum required to hold the majority vote, Reuters reported.
Media outlets have said that IDB would likely start the process of naming the successor to Claver-Carone sometime next week, and it’s likely to be a process that’s very politically charged. Reuters cited sources who said that some members of the IDB board may push for the next president to be a woman.
The bank has its headquarters in the U.S. in Washington, but is a key investor in the Caribbean and Latin America. The bank is responsible for almost 600 projects that are still ongoing in tourism, health and infrastructure.
In 2021 alone, IDB was responsible for financing that totaled $23.4 billion. It was expected to lend out billions of dollars to Argentina this year and next to help the country ease its own economic turmoil.
Claver-Carone is a Cuban-American who was nominated to serve as the president of IDB by former President Donald Trump. He was confirmed for the position and began his term of five years in October of 2020.
The now-former president used his limited time in power to wrangle power at IDB away from countries such as Brazil and Argentina, which have historically dominated the agenda at the bank for years. His idea was to focus on some of the smaller countries in Latin America to help them, too.
After an ethics investigation ended up finding real evidence that Claver-Carone engaged in a relationship with a senior staffer, the bank’s 14 directors unanimously voted last Thursday that a vote should be taken on whether he should be fired.
The major issue with the intimate relationship that Claver-Carone had with his subordinate is that he had direct employment decisions over her, including increases in salary that totaled in excess of 45% of her base salary in just one year.
More than 50 people who were interviewed as part of the bank’s internal investigation reported that Claver-Carone also created a hostile environment for workers. Many employees feared they would be retaliated against just for participating honestly and completely in the investigation.
As a source told Reuters:
“Across the bank, everyone is celebrating this.”
While Claver-Carone didn’t respond to requests for comments after he was fired, he had denied these allegations in the past. He also said the investigation failed to “meet international standards of integrity.”
