The businessman has donated over $47 billion to the Gates Foundation since 2006
Credit: Getty(2)
NEED TO KNOW
- Warren Buffett unveiled his annual list of donations, and it excludes the Gates Foundation
- Instead, the 95-year-old investor just announced his plans to donate 12,000,000 Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway to four other foundations
- The snub comes months after Buffett said he hadn’t spoken to his longtime friend Bill Gates in light of newly-released Epstein files
For the first time in two decades, Warren Buffett’s annual list of donations doesn’t include the Gates Foundation.
The 95-year-old investor announced on Tuesday, July 14 that he will donate 12,000,000 Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway to four foundations, notably excluding the organization co-founded by his longtime friend Bill Gates and ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
Buffett said he plans to donate 9,000,000 shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, as well as 1,000,000 shares each to the Sherwood Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation and Novo Foundation.
“My goal is to dispose of all of my Berkshire shares within about eight years,” the Berkshire Hathaway chairman said in a statement. “Of course, mortality is unpredictable, but my remaining shares will be donated to the four foundations one way or the other by December 31, 2034.”
Buffett —who has been supporting the Gates Foundation since 2006, when he first shared his plans to give away the majority of his fortune — previously revealed that he had not spoken to the Microsoft co-founder, 70, since Gates appeared in a cache of Epstein files released earlier this year.
Credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty
Speaking with CNBC in March, Buffett said he “didn’t want to be in a position where I know things” and potentially face getting subpoenaed by Congress amid their ongoing investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a statement obtained by PEOPLE on Tuesday, July 14, the Gates Foundation said they’re “grateful to Warren Buffett for his decades of support for our work.”
“His gifts, totaling more than $47 billion, have helped us expand and deliver on the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world,” the foundation added.
During his own testimony last month, Gates, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has repeatedly apologized for his past interactions with Epstein, answered questions about his dealings with the late financier, which began in 2011 as he sought support for his global health philanthropy, but ended in late 2014.
“It was after this that I learned Epstein had become aware of sensitive information about my personal life, including the fact that I had been unfaithful in my marriage,” Gates said during his opening statement, according to the 138-page testimony published by the House Oversight Committee. “These affairs had nothing to do with my interactions with Epstein, but they were painful for my family.”
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Gates went on to emphasize that he “never witnessed nor had any indication that Epstein was engaged in ongoing criminal conduct,” nor did he visit Epstein’s “island, his ranch, or his Florida home.”
Later, as committee members questioned him, Gates said he never interacted with Epstein’s victims, but may have been in their “presence.”
Credit: Tom Brenner/Getty
Even after resigning from the Gates Foundation board in 2021, following Bill and Melinda’s divorce, Buffett continued to donate money to the organization, including as recently as last year, when he gave away $6 billion to five charities, including the Gates Foundation.
The Gates Foundation previously announced that it had “commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships.”
An update is expected over the summer.
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