[9] Moghadam started in the European Department, where he got to deal with the fall-out from the collapse of the communist states, German reunification, and the implosion of the exchange-rate mechanism.
In 2003, Moghadam became Turkey mission chief at a time when its program was off track, inflation out of control and a newly- elected government was trying to find its feet in the build-up to war in Iraq.
[13] Recalling those years, Kemal Dervis, the then finance minister of Turkey, recently referred to Reza Moghadam as "one of the top economists in the world" and a "sometimes tough negotiator".
"[17] In November 2011, with the euro-area crisis deepening, Christine Lagarde who had taken over the helm of the IMF in July, asked Moghadam to become the Director of the European Department.
"He [Moghadam] is seen as a very credible and powerful insider," Eswar Prasad, a former IMF official and a senior fellow at Brookings Institution in Washington, told the Reuters news agency.
"It shows that the IMF intends to be much more assertive in playing a prominent role in Europe and Reza Moghadam is somebody who is seen as being able to move the Fund to that more aggressive position.
"[19] From then on, he was the key architect of the Fund’s strategy in dealing with crises in Greece,[20] Ireland,[21] Portugal, Cyprus [22] and later Ukraine;[23] he was also at the forefront of the policy dialogue with Italy[24] and the Euro-area.