IMF official leaves in a huff

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WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- Long-term International Monetary Fund official Peter Doyle said he was ashamed of the organization's reaction to the financial crisis in Europe.

"After twenty years of service, I am ashamed to have had any association with the fund at all," wrote Doyle announcing his resignation in a letter addressed to Shakour Shaalan, the dean of the executive board of the IMF, that was obtained by CNN.

Doyle, who served as the IMF's division head for Israel, Denmark and Sweden, said he was leaving the agency "not solely" for "incompetence," pointed out in recent audits, but because "substantive difficulties" in Europe that were known by the agency "but were suppressed here."

"So the failure of the Fund to issue (warnings) is a failing of the first order, even if such warnings may not have been heeded," Doyle wrote.

He also lambasted current IMF director Christine Lagarde, but attempted to steer the criticism away from a personal attack.

"Neither her gender, integrity or elan can make up for the fundamental illegitimacy of the selection process," that chose Lagarde, he wrote.

He said the selection process, with its European bias "is most clear in regard to appointments for Managing Director, which, over the past decade, have all-too-evidently been disastrous."

Before Lagarde's selection, former Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn left the IMF after he was accused of assaulting a maid in a New York hotel.