Two sources told Reuters that European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde confiscated the mobile phones of fellow policymakers at a meeting last week and reprimanded them for leaking important information before making a policy decision.
This is the unprecedented and most daring step taken by Lagarde to stop the leak of information from the bank’s Board of Governors, a problem that she has faced since the beginning of her presidency, as her predecessor, Mario Draghi, faced.
The 26 members of the bank’s governing board were asked to hand in their mobile phones on Wednesday, the first day of the meeting in which policymakers were about to select Claudia Buch to become the European Central Bank’s top banking supervisor, the two sources familiar with the matter said.
They added that the phones were returned after the announcement of Buch’s nomination to head the unified supervisory board, which supervises more than 100 of the largest banks in the euro zone.
The two sources said that the decision to confiscate the phones was taken because the selection of the current president of the council, Andrea Enria, in 2018 was reported in the media before it was officially announced.
A European Central Bank spokesman declined to comment.
Lagarde’s move came a day after Reuters alone revealed that the European Central Bank would raise key inflation expectations, paving the way for raising interest rates, last Thursday.
2023-09-16 22:06:10
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