Updated

Updated · Fortune · Jul 21

Buffett Ends $48 Billion Gates Foundation Giving as Review Details 30 Epstein Meetings

Updated

Updated · Fortune · Jul 21

Buffett Ends $48 Billion Gates Foundation Giving as Review Details 30 Epstein Meetings

Q: Why did the Gates Foundation's review of Epstein ties exclude Bill Gates's own private office?

It was excluded because the review was deliberately scoped to examine only the Gates Foundation’s conduct, not Bill Gates’s personal affairs or the operations of his separate private office, Gates Ventures. The WilmerHale review was commissioned to assess whether the foundation itself had participated in, known about, or financially supported Jeffrey Epstein’s activities. Its executive summary explicitly said it did not cover Gates’s personal interactions, personal communications, or Gates Ventures, which is a separate personal service and investment entity rather than part of the foundation. The available reporting does not give a fuller explanation beyond that limited mandate. In other words, the exclusion appears to have been a boundary set by the foundation when it ordered the review, not a finding by investigators that the private office was irrelevant. WilmerHale also noted it did not have access to Gates’s personal communications, underscoring that the inquiry was not designed as a comprehensive examination of all Epstein-related contacts across Gates’s wider network. That narrow scope is significant because Gates Ventures and Gates’s personal office did have contact with Epstein, according to congressional testimony and other reporting. So the review answered a specific question about institutional knowledge and conduct at the foundation, but it did not resolve questions about Gates’s private office or his personal dealings.

3 articles · Updated · Fortune · Jul 21

$48 billion in Buffett donations to the Gates Foundation have now ended after he withheld this year’s gift while awaiting an Epstein review, according to the report.
About 30 meetings linked Bill Gates and the foundation to Jeffrey Epstein from 2011 to 2014, including visits to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse and one meeting on foundation grounds, despite staff concerns.
WilmerHale found no evidence the foundation paid Epstein, joined his sex-trafficking crimes or knew of his criminal activity; the contacts centered on a proposed public-health donor fund and the International Peace Institute.
The foundation said it regrets any employee interaction with Epstein and will tighten partner vetting and risk controls, while Buffett has also cited his children’s readiness to distribute his wealth and his 2034 giving timeline.
The split closes one of philanthropy’s biggest partnerships: Buffett had backed the foundation since 2006, while the organization plans to spend down its endowment and shut by Dec. 31, 2045.