Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday urged the International Monetary Fund to sell a swanky country club it owns in Maryland after The Post revealed how its staff qualify for discounted memberships at the posh golf course.
As first reported by The Post, Bessent’s former chief of staff Dan Katz was picked last month to become the IMF’s second-in-command as the Trump administration plans a shakeup of the global lender, which has long been accused of running a bloated bureaucracy staffed by high-paid paper pushers.
On Tuesday, Bessent exclusively told The Post that Katz may demand that the Bretton Woods Recreation Center go on the block as part of a cost-cutting program.
“They can start by selling the golf course,” Bessent said of the resort, which charges regular customers between $12,000 and $20,000 in initiation fees that are waived for bureaucrats of both bodies. “I don’t think (President Trump) knows about it. I don’t think he would be happy about it.”
The Treasury Secretary said the current commander-in-chief wants officials at the global financial firefighter “to go back to their core mission,” which he said is “providing liquidity, providing backstops, and being useful as an intervention when countries are in trouble.”
Bessent has been a staunch critic of the IMF since joining the Trump administration, accusing it of straying from its original mission of economic stability by focusing on woke causes.
He said the IMF should also slam the brakes on its “dalliance in these climate policies or social engineering.”
The Post has approached an IMF spokesperson for comment.
There have already been signs of some changes at the institution, which is often described as a lender of last resort because it helps bail out debt-laden economies.
Katz, a Yale graduate and Goldman Sachs alum, also served in the first Trump administration, played a key role in thrashing out the US’s economic partnership deal with Ukraine and is seen as one of Bessent’s closest confidantes.
Katz also has personal ties with the world of global finance: Lord Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, officiated his wedding ceremony in Riverside, Connecticut, in September 2019.
The former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who joined the Treasury Department in January, is now the most senior American at the IMF after being formally confirmed in his new role two weeks ago.
Last month, The Post reported the Fund’s climate and gender units would no longer operate as standalone divisions inside the body, but would instead be merged into its wider macroeconomic unit.
“The Secretary has been very clear that this woke b——t needs to end,” said one DC insider of Katz’s move to the global organization led by Bulgarian economist Kristalina Georgieva.
The International Monetary Fund was at the forefront of the European debt crisis in 2008 when Eurozone economies were sent into meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
It was created out of the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 in the US when the US, the UK, and the former Soviet Union discussed how to shape the post-WW2 global economy.
Under a long-standing ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between the United States and its European allies, a US citizen is always nominated to run the IMF’s sister organization, the World Bank.
In turn, the US always supports the candidacy of a European to take the reins of the Fund.
This newspaper has repeatedly exposed how the World Bank’s bureaucrats enjoy a jet-setting lifestyle while lecturing poorer countries on how to run their economies.
Aside from the Maryland country club, officials at the IMF also enjoy lavish perks virtually unheard of in the private sector, and many people in the countries that take its loans can only dream of.
Stiff initiation fees at the IMF-owned golf course — which range from $12,000 to $20,000 — are automatically waived for all employees on the payroll of the two institutions. They make up 80% of its membership, according to insiders.
Club documents show IMF employees who pick up $162,699 or less pay monthly dues between $142 and $312 a month, with senior IMF executives who earn over that sum asked to fork out $355 a month.
Joining fees are also waived for World Bank staffers, the documents show, but they must hand over between $213 and $532 a month for the pleasure of playing there.
By contrast, regular Joes have to pay both the five-figure initiation fees and dues ranging from $235 to $585.
The 285-acre Bretton Woods resort, worth an estimated $20 million, boasts an 18-hole golf course, two swimming pools, as well as dining and banquet rooms.
It is formally registered as a non-profit. IMF staff insist it operates independently of the Fund, but its 2023 tax filings show that two of its top brass sit on its board: Robert York and Olivier Fleurence.
Sources say the club was set up in 1968 at a time when racial discrimination was rife in the United States, although they stopped short of explaining why the organization still owns the resort today.
The IMF’s top directors can rake in up to $466,650 annually — more than the pre-tax $400,000 salary of President Trump — compared with $53,350 for junior staffers, according to the latest publicly available salary information.
They can also pick up eye-popping retirement benefits, including “a generous final salary” pension, paid private schooling for their offspring, and comprehensive worldwide health insurance, the IMF’s recruitment page states
