Criticism[edit]
Draghi is a member of the Group of Thirty founded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Group of Thirty is a private group of lobbyists in the finance sector.[36][37] For this reason he is accused of having a conflict of interest as president of the ECB. Some parties also see Draghi's former work at Goldman Sachs as a conflict of interest.[38][39][40][41]
Beginning in 2013 Draghi was criticised in the context of the scandals rising around the bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS):[42] It became evident that while Draghi was Governor of the Italian central bank, the MPS was making very risky deals. Under his leadership the Italian central bank provided to the stumbling MPS a loan secured with bonds of two billion Euros in October 2011 - yet neither the public nor the Italian parliament were informed by leadership at the Italian central bank that this loan was being provided to MPS. As a result of this secret salvage of the MPS, junk bonds ended up in the ownership of the Italian central bank. In return, the MPS received government bonds and now the Italian tax payers are paying for the debts plus interest. In this way, Draghi created the foundations for a system of European shadow banks under the leadership of the national central banks. This system was created with the purpose of protecting private banks and their owners from economic collapse and nationalisation. The timing is problematic for Draghi, since the ECB is on its way to becoming the European Financial Supervisory Authority – as was done in Italy. In case the Italian model turns out to be wrong, this would also affect negotiations around the European Financial Supervisory Authority in 2013.[43]
On 15 April 2015, during the monthly press conference, Draghi was heckled by a female protester, Josephine Witt, live on television, calling the Central European Bank a "dictatorship".[44]