A philanthropist claimed that Jeffrey Epstein said he played a role in managing money for Bill Gates — contradicting the Microsoft co-founder’s repeated efforts to downplay his ties to the convicted pedophile, according to a report.
Barnaby Marsh, a philanthropist who advises the wealthy on their charitable giving, said that Epstein liked to gather billionaire power players in his Manhattan apartment — including Gates — to try to solve issues wealthy donors faced, The Wall Street Journal reported.
During these meetings, Epstein’s guests also discussed how to make large donations, and Epstein was known to openly talk about his jail time, Marsh told the Journal.
Marsh said he attended these gatherings himself because of the other billionaires and academics that were there — and they all had the same interest in philanthropy.
“So many of these billionaires knew him,” Marsh told the Journal. “Nobody ever said, ‘Watch out for him.’”
The Journal also reported that Marsh said “Epstein told Mr. Marsh that Epstein was managing money for Mr. Gates.”
It’s unclear what year these meetings took place in, but as of 2019, the same year Epstein was arrested, Gates had a net worth of $104.7 billion. (Today, 67-year-old Gates is worth $113.2 billion.)
A spokeswoman for Gates said that Epstein and the Microsoft co-founder met for philanthropic reasons. She also claimed that Epstein misrepresented his relationship with Gates.
“As Bill has said many times before, it was a mistake to have ever met with him and he deeply regrets it,” the spokeswoman told The Journal.
Marsh met with Epstein about two dozen times for breakfast at the disgraced financier’s Manhattan townhouse, new documents obtained by The Journal revealed.
When Marsh served as the executive at large for the John Templeton Foundation, Epstein had also asked for assistance in funding to support Larry Summers’s wife’s nonprofit.
“I had high hopes that he would follow the paths of others who used their ‘second chance’ to make a positive impact in the world,” Marsh said of Epstein. “In the end, he disappointed me.”
To this day, Gates is asked about his relationship with the Manhattan-moneymaker-turned-pedophile.
Most recently, Gates appeared on Australia’s “ABC 7.30” where host Sarah Ferguson asked: “Do you regret the relationship that you maintained with him against Melinda’s advice and wishes?”
“I will say for the over a 100th time, yeah, I shouldn’t have had dinners with him,” Gates replied.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
