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The Gates Foundation’s chief executive said he feels “sullied” by its association with Jeffrey Epstein, as he seeks to manage the fallout from the sex offender’s interactions with the philanthropic body and its chair Bill Gates.
Communications between foundation staff and Epstein over an abortive fundraising plan were “deeply unsettling and depressing” and “shouldn’t have happened”, Mark Suzman told employees.
His comments came in response to staff concerns about potential knock-on damage to the $86bn foundation from Gates’ involvement with Epstein for several years after the financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor.
“I feel somewhat sullied by just any association of Epstein with the work we do,” Suzman told employees at a town-hall meeting on February 5. “And having that association just makes [our mission] more uncomfortable and more challenging and more difficult in ways that it shouldn’t.”
Bill Gates, the foundation’s main ongoing funder and Microsoft’s co-founder, had acknowledged publicly that he was “foolish” and that he “regrets ever having engaged with Epstein”, Suzman told staff.
Gates has not been accused of involvement in Epstein’s sexual abuse. Draft emails on Epstein’s account claimed Gates tried to hide a sexually transmitted disease from his then wife Melinda French Gates after having sex with “Russian girls”.
A spokesperson for Bill Gates has said the claims are “absolutely absurd and completely false”, demonstrating only Epstein’s “frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates”.
The subject of Epstein and the fallout from the scandal came up several times during the Gates Foundation town hall, according to a transcript reviewed by the FT.
One staff member asked Suzman what he would say to people “struggling to reconcile their commitment” to the foundation’s goals with “concern about what they’re hearing and reading about the chair”.
Another expressed worries about the apparent tension between the the “name on our wall and what we are learning”, and “our mission and our belief that all lives hold equal value”.
The foundation said the town hall was a quarterly event where Suzman discussed a variety of topics, including the external pressures related to the “devastating aid cuts” of the past year.
Gates Foundation employees and Epstein discussed a plan to channel donations to the organisation, according to emails released by the US Department of Justice last month.
The contacts took place “on the basis of Epstein’s claims that he could mobilise significant philanthropic resources for global health and development”, the foundation said in a statement this week.
The foundation made no payments to Epstein, did not pursue any collaboration with him, and no fund was ever created, it said. It would continue to review materials released in connection with the matter, it added.
The Gates Foundation was launched in 2000 and has become a leading funder of global health efforts, including a gender equality division focused on women and girls in Africa and South Asia.
Its main funding has comprised more than $60bn from Bill Gates and Melinda, together with more than $43bn from the investor Warren Buffett. Suzman, a former FT journalist and UN official, took over as chief executive in 2020.
The foundation has taken on an even more prominent role as the US and other rich countries have made big cuts to overseas aid since last year. It is set to be the leading funder of the World Health Organization after the US withdrew from the UN body and dozens of other organisations last month.
The foundation overhauled its governance in 2022, expanding its board of trustees after Bill and Melinda’s decision to divorce and Warren Buffett’s resignation as a trustee. Bill Gates announced last year that the foundation would close its doors at the end of 2045.
Spokespeople for Bill Gates, who is due to hold a town hall with foundation staff in the coming weeks, have been approached for comment.