So the group - which included William Sonneborn, the World Bank official who oversaw the investment in Bridge, and another World Bank staff member, Shannon Atkeson - hatched a plan to keep the allegations hidden.
They include notes, contracts, a whistleblower complaint and supporting documents later filed by Adler to a World Bank's ethics office, and a draft of the long-delayed CAO investigative report finding serious deficiencies in the way the World Bank and Bridge protected children from sex abuse and gender-based violence in its schools.
Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who serves on the Banking Committee, and Peter Welch, D-Vt., sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and World Bank President Ajay Banga, laying out a list of questions for the Bank about the Bridge investigation.
Without naming Adler specifically, but making a clear reference to him, it goes on to warn the Bank against retaliating against staff who blew the whistle, asking what the Treasury Department and Bank would do so that "World Bank Group staff who have raised concerns about these issues are recognized as having whistleblower status under the Staff Rules and will be protected from retaliation by their employer."
World Bank sources told The Intercept that his departure included a strict NDA. But the World Bank quickly moved to hobble the ability of its investigative unit to make public whatever it found.
CAO's 82-page draft report shows that the World Bank was aware of a child sex abuse case at a Bridge school as early as 2013, citing analysis from a Kenyan law firm that the World Bank commissioned before investing in Bridge.
Bridge consistently argued to the Bank that child sex abuse did not fall under the Bank's oversight, and the Bank just as often acceded to that logic.
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/17/world-bank-whistleblower-bridge-international/
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