Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates and the Scandals We Don't See

The private life of a billionaire couple is becoming public. But Bill Gates role in shaping policy remains the real scandal.

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In my May 5 post, I raised the possibility that the divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates might turn ugly, which in turn would have massive ripple effects on global public health since they donate billions to causes like polio eradication and also set the pace for other philanthropists. My foreboding seems to have been justified. Major news outlets have been reporting on Bill Gates’ friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship now said to have troubled Melinda. Given the way celebrity divorces play out in the media, it is likely that Melinda Gates’ public relations team leaked this information as an early move in the divorce negotiations. Which doesn’t mean the reports are untrue. All it indicates is that the coming court room tussle could get nasty.

But I would insist that since the Gates’ are public figures, indeed people who literally cast a shadow over the well being of hundreds of million around the world, the public consequences of the divorce, including the Jeffrey Epstein stories, need to be read as policy stories.

A Bill Gates spokesperson told The New York Times in May, “Bill only met with Epstein to discuss philanthropy.” This gestures towards a rationale that has been made by some that Gates tapped into Epstein because the convicted child molester had ties to a scientific and philanthropic network that could be useful to the Microsoft founder.

On the face of it, this explanation makes not one bloody whit of sense. Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world. He could with a phone call talk to virtually any scientist or rich person he wanted. He didn’t need Jeffrey Epstein’s network. Which makes the bachelor bonhomie he reportedly found in Epstein’s company all the more troubling.

As The Daily Beast reports, “Bachelor sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein gave Bill Gates advice on ending his marriage with Melinda after the Microsoft co-founder complained about her during a series of meetings at the money manager’s mansion, according to two people familiar with the situation.” The website added, “Gates used the gatherings at Epstein’s $77 million New York townhouse as an escape from what he told Epstein was a ‘toxic’ marriage, a topic both men found humorous.”

But let’s stipulate, only for the sake of argument and in defiance of news reports and simple common sense, that the Gates/Epstein relationship was just about philanthropy and nothing else: even that is terrible because the Gates Foundation is a major donor to anti-trafficking efforts and Epstein himself was guilty of sex trafficking in minors. At the very least Gates was using his good name as the head of a foundation that claimed to help trafficked people to launder the money and reputation of the most notorious trafficker of our epoch.

Melissa Gira Grant, a veteran reporter on sex work issues, penned a fine survey in The New Republic of the many contradictions of the Gates Foundations’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s striking to discover that one Epstein employee transferred to the Gates Foundation. Further, the Gates Foundation focused on anti-trafficking measures in a manner where the burden of punishment was experienced by poor sex workers and not wealthy traffickers like Epstein.

As Grant reports:

Over the years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had poured millions of dollars into anti–sex trafficking groups, among many other causes, including $5 million to the evangelical group International Justice Mission, which is perhaps most known for conducting dramatic brothel raids in Southeast Asia. At the time, international sex workers’ rights groups condemned the grant and IJM, but nearly no one else drew attention to the traumatic arrests and threats of deportations alleged by sex workers whose workplaces were raided.

Microsoft was also involved in developing AI and surveillance tools that allegedly help combat trafficking. Grant is rightly jaundiced by these efforts, noting again that they focus their efforts at low income sex workers and their clients. She concludes, “All this is to say, sometimes A.I. sex trafficking victims can get more corporate, philanthropic, and law enforcement resources than actual victims.”

Bill Gates’ anti-trafficking philanthropy has the same pattern and problem as his larger charitable efforts: it’s a do-good exercise that is designed to brandish his public image but has the actual effecting of reinforcing the social status quo and especially of entrenching inequality.

Bill Gates gives away a lot of money, but still less than he keeps earning. His net worth has only grown larger since he started pretending he was Santa Claus. Further, the money is always given in a way that makes sure that Gates and people like him, including people like Jeffrey Epstein, remain at the top of the pyramid.

The Covid pandemic makes all too clear just how harmful Gates’ brand of supposed charity actually is. Using his position as a top funder for public health, Gates has actively pushed for a global regime of vaccine apartheid, where poor countries will have to be last in line and beg for relief.

Writing in Jacobin, Luke Savage outlined Gates’ roles in the unfolding tragedy:

Gates, who incidentally owes much of his own fortune to monopolistic intellectual property laws, has been more than a passive actor in the pandemic — having, among other things, convinced Oxford University to renege on its original promise of a no-patent vaccine and partner with the profit-driven AstraZeneca instead. Arguably more than any other single figure, the billionaire has mobilized his immense personal wealth and power to ensure that the interests of for-profit drug companies prevail over global public health.

As is already quite clear, it’s a recipe for vaccine apartheid and preventable death: one that will ensure people in richer countries get vaccinated more quickly and supply remains far short of what it otherwise could be.

The Gates divorce might get even messier and dominate headlines for months to come. But amid the gossip the divorce will generate, we should never forget that the real scandal is that a monopolist and plutocrat has unjustified power to shape public policy. Again, the only solution is to tax the Gates so that their wealth can be used for the public good.

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