It is Thursday March 11 and the press conference to announce the EBRD's financial losses is about to start. Deputy vice president David Hexter, who has overall responsibility for financial institutions and who sat on the board of the now-defunct Russian bank Tokobank, is sitting next to the bank's vice president of finance Steven Kaempfer.
What happens next says as much about the EBRD's attitude towards the concept of public accountability as it does about the mistakes made in its Russian portfolio - Tokobank started to go wrong only three months after the EBRD invested in it.
Kaempfer, who joined EBRD from Credit Suisse at the start of the year, plays the big leader tasked with fielding awkward questions from the press about the bank's losses. Looking important and ministerial he faces down a coterie of journalists assembled in one of the bank's conference rooms. But as the meeting progresses it becomes less and less clear whether Kaempfer is answering the questions or whether he is he just a mouthpiece for Hexter, flamboyantly dressed in a purple shirt, who is sitting close by. As every question lands, Hexter scribbles furiously in a notebook, rips out the page and hands it to Kaempfer who glances at it and carries on talking.