The executive board of the IMF has left the fate of the institution’s embattled head, Kristalina Georgieva, in limbo after grilling her about allegations that she artificially boosted China’s ranking over the favourability of doing business in the country during her time at the World Bank.

The IMF board said on Wednesday that it needed to hold more talks on the matter. The statement comes just days before the start of annual meetings for the IMF and World Bank, casting a shadow over the flagship events that typically bring together financial ministers and central banks officials from around the world to Washington.

“The executive board remains committed to a thorough, objective, and timely review and expects to meet again soon for further discussion,” an IMF spokesperson said. The board is expected to meet again on Friday.

The meeting with Georgieva followed discussions on Monday with representatives from WilmerHale, the law firm that wrote a report commissioned by the World Bank’s board detailing allegations that she attempted to improperly pressure bank staff to amend rankings for the 2018 Doing Business report to China’s benefit. At that time, the bank was also negotiating a multibillion-dollar capital increase.

In her remarks to the board on Wednesday, which were obtained by the Financial Times, Georgieva doubled down on her denials of any wrongdoing.

“I cannot stress more strongly that I would never urge the alteration of data and analysis to please a particular government, and I have never pressured anybody to manipulate data to achieve such a result,” she told the board, adding that she had a “very limited role” in pulling together the 2018 report.

Georgieva also spelt out what she described as five “critical errors” in the WilmerHale report, accusing it of drawing the “wrong conclusion on the basis of impressions and opinions of those without direct knowledge of or participation in key events”, and “substituting hearsay and innuendo for facts” regarding her relationship with the staff responsible for pulling together the report, among other claims.

“It takes responsible actions and contorts them, making the worst and most tenuous inferences possible about each event based on little direct evidence, and without taking into account my statements, professional history, or personal style,” she added.

Georgieva highlighted one interaction flagged by the WilmerHale lawyers as evidence of her involvement, in which she expressed thanks to Shantayanan Devarajan, a former senior World Bank official who worked on the report. He has denied that Georgieva had ever put pressure on him.

“Saying ‘thank you’ comes naturally to me,” she told the board on Wednesday. “In this particular case, I apparently added ‘for doing your bit for multilateralism’ — I don’t recall it, but it should not come as a surprise when used to praise the work of staff in a multilateral organisation and in the context of finalising a global report.”