The world-renowned billionaire and investor Warren Buffett will no longer donate to Bill Gates’ charity. Detailed information has recently emerged about the Microsoft co-founder’s relationship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and it is on that account that Buffett has taken the decision.
In 2006, Buffett pledged to donate Berkshire Hathaway shares each year, for the rest of his life, to what was then the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But on Tuesday, when he announced donations of shares worth hundreds of crores of dollars to several organisations, the Gates Foundation’s name was not among them.
Instead, those shares will be divided among four foundations linked to members of the Buffett family. Buffett, 95, said he would donate all his remaining Berkshire Hathaway shares within the next eight years.
“There is no certainty about when a person will die,” Buffett said. “One way or another, by 31 December 2034 I will have donated all my remaining shares to those four foundations.”
Gates’ contact with Epstein came to light last January when the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released documents related to Epstein, and Buffett took the decision six months later.
Buffett did not name Bill Gates or Jeffrey Epstein in his donation statement. But in an interview with CNBC in March, he said: “After the whole thing came out, Gates and I have not spoken again.”
Buffett added: “I do not want to be in a situation where — suppose I know a lot and am therefore called as a witness.”
Over the past 20 years, Buffett has donated a total of $47 billion to the Gates Foundation. On this, the Gates Foundation told the BBC that Warren Buffett had helped the foundation’s work for several decades and that it was grateful to him.
The foundation also said that, thanks to Bill Gates’ pledge of $200 billion, it was in a financially strong position, and that as a result it would be able to run its activities until 2045.
Bill Gates was called before the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee in June to answer questions about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. In 2019, Epstein was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in a New York jail, where he died.
In his testimony, Gates said he had met Epstein in 2011. Those who introduced them had suggested that Epstein could help with the health work the Gates Foundation funds — that is, that he could help raise hundreds of crores of dollars in donations.
“I knew Epstein had faced some legal charges before,” Gates said, “but I did not realise he had committed such terrible crimes.” In 2008, Epstein had admitted to soliciting a minor for sex and involving another person under the age of 18 in sex work.
Gates told the committee: “From the very start, I should not have met Epstein. Knowing what I know now, I understand that keeping a relationship with him — even though he connected me with pledged donors — was in no way right.”
Warren Buffett was once a major supporter of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2006 he said the organisation’s work was genuinely praiseworthy, which was why he had pledged to donate every year.
In 2010, Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates jointly launched the Giving Pledge, aimed at encouraging the world’s ultra-rich to donate most of their wealth during their lifetime or after death.
In 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates ended their 27-year marriage. Melinda then stepped away from the Gates Foundation in 2024 but did not step back from charitable work, announcing that she would donate $1 billion to advance women’s rights in the United States.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report