World Bank staff were told to give special treatment to son of Trump official

World Bank staff were apparently told to give preferential treatment to the son of a high-ranking Trump administration official after the US Treasury threw its support behind a $13bn (£10bn) funding increase for the organisation, a leaked recording suggests.

Shared with the Guardian by a whistleblower, the recording of a 2018 staff meeting suggests colleagues were encouraged by a senior manager to curry favour with the son of David Malpass, who is now president of the World Bank but at the time was serving in the US Treasury under Donald Trump.

The findings raise concerns over internal standards at the World Bank Group (WBG), which is governed by high-ranking officials from across its 189 member states, and is holding its spring meeting alongside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington this week.

Malpass was, in 2018, serving as undersecretary to the US Treasury for international affairs in the Trump administration and had been a staunch critic of multilateral institutions, at a time when the World Bank was seeking approval from the US government for a sizeable increase in the funds available to lend to developing nations.

The whistleblower who shared the recording said they believed the episode raised concerns about the way the World Bank Group was governed and influenced by its largest member state.

The World Bank said it was unaware of any recordings, had no way to confirm whether they occurred, or whether they were accurate transcriptions of what was said.

David Malpass was appointed to the Treasury role in 2017, and later chosen to run the World Bank in 2019, by Trump.

Robert, who is the eldest of four children, subsequently stepped down in March 2019 after his father was appointed president of the World Bank, because of internal rules that do not allow family members to work in the same organisation.

The Guardian attempted to contact both David Malpass and Robert Malpass through their employers and social media. They did not respond to requests to comment.