The World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, violated the agency’s ethics rules when he arranged a pay increase and a promotion for his companion, a panel of directors has concluded, according to a bank official.

[The New York Times reported last night that leading European governments, mounting a new campaign to push Mr. Wolfowitz from his job, suggested they would let America choose the bank’s next leader, but only if Mr. Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said.]

Mr. Wolfowitz has been given the report and will have a chance to respond, said the official, who declined to be identified because the report hasn’t been made public. The document will later be presented to the bank’s full 24-member board, which has the authority to dismiss or reprimand him. Mr. Wolfowitz’s attorney, Robert Bennett, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The finding raises the odds that the former U.S. deputy defense secretary will be the first World Bank chief to leave under fire. Kevin Kellems, Mr. Wolfowitz’s senior strategist and a focus for complaints he used his office to further U.S. foreign policy objectives, resigned yesterday.

“I believe the bank can only do good work if it has a good and sound reputation,” the Dutch finance minister, Wouter Bos, told reporters in Brussels yesterday. “I am concerned about its reputation.”

Policy makers in Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland have also been critical of Mr. Wolfowitz, saying the controversy had hobbled his credibility. President Bush, who appointed him in 2005, has stood by Mr. Wolfowitz, 63.

“We have not seen the report,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “The president continues to support Paul Wolfowitz and believes that he should continue to lead the World Bank.”

The panel investigated Mr. Wolfowitz’s role in arranging the deal under which Shaha Riza, 52, was transferred to the State Department in 2005 to avoid a potential conflict of interest. Ms. Riza, a communications officer in the Middle East and North Africa department, stayed on the World Bank payroll.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who is divorced, told the panel that he was merely carrying out the orders of the agency’s ethics committee when he arranged a 36% pay raise for Ms. Riza, to $180,000, with guarantees of future increases of 8% a year. The deal also stipulated she would be offered a promotion to the level of director after Mr. Wolfowitz’s five-year term expired.

The generous terms of the deal, Mr. Wolfowitz said, were intended as a “settlement of potential claims” by Ms. Riza, who was being transferred against her will and whose career at the World Bank was “effectively ended.”

Ad Melkert, the chairman of the ethics committee at the time, disputed Mr. Wolfowitz’s account. He said that while the committee told Mr. Wolfowitz to arrange a transfer beyond his “supervisory influence” and recommended a raise for Ms. Riza, it never reviewed or approved the details of the deal.

Mr. Wolfowitz, who initially apologized for the controversy, last week lashed out at the panel, saying he wouldn’t quit in the face of a “bogus charge” and that he had been the victim of a “smear campaign.”

Detractors said Mr. Wolfowitz presided over an exodus of experienced World Bank managers while relying on a coterie of advisors recruited from the Bush administration with scant experience in economic development.

Mr. Kellems, 42, the director of communications strategy since January 2006, had worked as an adviser to Mr. Wolfowitz in the Defense Department and also served as a spokesman for Vice President Cheney. “Given the current environment surrounding the leadership of the World Bank group, it is very difficult to be effective,” Mr. Kellems said yesterday, reading from a statement.

Mr. Wolfowitz’s advisers are “jumping off the ship at this point,” said Steven Schneck, head of the politics department at Catholic University in Washington. “When the inner circle is starting to quit, it is a sign they think it is starting to go down.”

Another senior adviser, Robin Cleveland, who is counselor to the president, had been an associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.