Furious IMF official attacks its 'tainted' leadership

Resigning whistleblower describes his shame at working for 'incompetent' body

A senior International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist has quit the organisation and launched a blistering attack on its record and present leadership.

In his resignation letter, Peter Doyle accused the IMF of suppressing warnings that the global economic system was heading for a crash in the years preceding the 2008 financial crisis.

Mr Doyle, who worked at the IMF for 20 years and was a senior adviser to the Fund's European Department, added that he was now "ashamed to have had any association with the Fund at all".

The Fund did voice some misgivings about growing imbalances in the global economy ahead of the 2008 banking crisis that set off a synchronised international slump. But, according to Mr Doyle, who left the organisation in June, its bureaucracy also gagged analysts who wanted to sound the alarm more loudly.

"The substantial difficulties were identified well in advance but were suppressed here" he said.

"The consequences include suffering (and risk of worse to come) for many including Greece".

He added that the IMF had not learned the lessons of its previous failure to warn of the impending crash.

"The proximate factors which produced these failings of IMF surveillance – analytical risk aversion, bilateral priority, and European bias – are, if anything becoming more deeply entrenched," he said.

Mr Doyle also lambasted the tradition, since the Fund was established in 1944, of appointing a European national to be its managing director, regardless of how well qualified candidates from elsewhere in the world might be.

Referring to the present managing director, former French finance minister Christine Lagarde, he said: "Even the present incumbent is tainted as neither her gender, integrity or elan can make up for the fundamental illegitimacy of the selection process".

He said the injustice of this process goes on "to infuse the organisation as a whole, overwhelming everything else" leaving the Fund "handicapped".

Mr Doyle also warned that disaffection was widespread in the Washington-based organisation and other IMF employees could also leave.

"There are good, salty people here. But this one is moving on," he said. "You might want to take care not to lose the others".

Mr Doyle's letter, obtained by CNN, was addressed to Skakour Shaalan, dean of the IMF's executive board.