Internal EU supervisory authority launched an investigation which targets the European Central Bank president Mario Draghi. It all stems from a complaint that he would be in a conflict of interest, because he belongs to G30, an international club of top bankers, according to EUobserver. “We received a complaint and sent a letter to the ECB. Now we are waiting for an answer,” said a spokesman for the EU ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros. ECB has a deadline to respond by the end of October. ECB confirmed receiving the letter, but rejected the claim that membership in G30 would be contrary to the ethical code of the institution.
The complaint was filed against Draghi in June by the Corporate Europe Observatory, an organization in Brussels that promotes transparency. The institution has criticized Draghi’s membership to a banking lobby group whose stated aim is to influence the debate on banking regulation.
“There is an opaque nature about group activities and about its members. The public can not know the details of the involvement of the ECB chief, because meetings are confidential. Information on the discussions that are taking place and about any commitments of members to certain lines of action are not accessible to the public. In our opinion, the group is a lobby vehicle for private financial interests “, says the complaint of the Corporate Europe Observatory.
Draghi has been strongly criticized at his appointment as president of the ECB, as he previously held the positions of vice chairman and managing director at the U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs, where he oversaw European operations, among them transactions that hid the real budget deficit of Greece.
Bloomberg opened a case against the ECB at the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg because the central bank refused to provide internal documents relating to operations Goldman Sachs – Greece.
G30 is led by former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet and the list of members include people with important regulatory responsibilities, financial industry executives and academics. Former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, Bank of Israel Governor, Stanley Fischer, Governor of Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, chairman of UBS, Axel Weber, Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University and Kenneth Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University are also members.
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