AIIB Chief Rejects Canada’s Concerns and Is Confident of Members’ Support

Brian Platt and Natasha White
Thu, June 22, 2023 




(Bloomberg) -- The president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank said he’s not worried about Canada reviewing its involvement with the institution and contended that other major-country shareholders are supporting the lender.

“I don’t think a serious government would make any decision not based on facts,” Jin Liqun, the bank’s president and board chair, told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of a financing summit in Paris.

“We think all the allegations are baseless,” said Jin, a Chinese national who is serving his second five-year term as president. “We have a very strong governance structure and adhere to international best practice.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced last week that Canada would halt all activities with the bank while she conducts a review of allegations made by an outgoing executive.

Bob Pickard, a Canadian who served as AIIB’s global head of communications, posted on Twitter that he was quitting because the lender was “dominated by Communist Party members and also has one of the most toxic cultures imaginable.”

Pickard has also since alleged in interviews that the AIIB was considering funding projects in Russia again, despite a freeze on such activities since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While Pickard’s tweets gave Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland the public opening to halt her government’s involvement with the AIIB, Canadian officials say the government’s concerns go deeper and predate Pickard’s allegations.

There are specific concerns about the bank’s governance being too centralized, which will be part of the review, said the officials, who spoke on condition they not be named. They said the review is not just a rhetorical exercise and kept open the possibility that Canada chooses to remain an AIIB shareholder.

But Canada also has more general concerns about the bank’s positioning regarding Russia. Freeland has been adamant that Russia be cut off from access to global financial institutions until it withdraws from Ukraine. Some Canadian officials see the AIIB as preferring to keep a neutral stance on President Vladimir Putin’s war and potentially opening the way for re-engaging with Russia.

Asked about the AIIB’s stance on Russia, Jin said there is no change to the bank’s policy since the invasion. “We issued a declaration after the war broke out in Ukraine that we put all the projects in the pipeline for Russian and Belarus on hold for review,” he said.


Jin declined to say how long that review of Russian projects might last. “I don’t predict the future, but the review goes on,” he said. “The management makes this decision in the interest of every member of this bank.”

So far, none of the AIIB’s other 105 members have publicly adopted Canada’s position, including Group of Seven countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy. The United States is not a member and has long warned allies about the bank’s lack of transparency and independence from China’s leadership.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should act as a “counterweight” to China’s growing clout in the developing world. Beijing hit back, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin saying “they are not called the IMF or the World Bank of the United States.”

While China is the largest shareholder in the AIIB with 26.6% of the voting share, Jin is the only Chinese national on the bank’s senior leadership team. Other members include former Chief Secretary to the UK Treasury Danny Alexander and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Urjit Patel — both nationals of countries with strained ties to Beijing.

The AIIB, which is headquartered in Beijing, was established in 2016 with the goal of “investing in sustainable infrastructure in Asia and beyond,” according to its website. It says it has so far invested in 221 projects worth $42 billion.

Canada applied to join the AIIB in 2016 and formally entered the institution in 2018. As of 2019, it was dedicated to a 1% membership in the bank that would commit it to a stake worth $995 million.

Trudeau’s government launched the probe of its involvement with the bank as it fends off criticism over its handling of alleged Chinese interference in recent Canadian elections. The Chinese embassy in Canada has denied the claims.

--With assistance from Lucille Liu, Bryce Baschuk and Akshat Rathi.

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