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Warren Buffett, who is known as being one of the world’s most successful investors, has broken his silence on Bill Gates’ relationship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Buffett described the friendship between the Microsoft co-founder and Epstein as ‘distasteful’, but admitted that he himself had made the mistake of being friends with people ‘who weren’t what I thought they were’.
This comes after the investor’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, announced that it would stop donations to Gates’ charity.
This move would mean for the first time in two decades, Buffett’s firm would not be gifting money to the charitable organization.
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Recently speaking to CNBC, Buffett said: “I would point out that I have read a great deal since January 1 in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein. And I have read his remarks to Congress given under oath, and I read the cross-examination. And while it’s distasteful, while he made mistakes, I made mistakes in hiring all kinds of people or choosing friends, and then finding out later that they - that one way or another they weren’t what I thought they were.
“And so I found nothing in there that was beyond what I could see, I could picture myself doing. And he ended it. And I have had situations where I made mistakes about people, or people may have felt they made mistakes about me, but they - you know, life goes on. And no one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people.”
Interviewer Becky Quick responded with: “You’re talking about hiring decisions, maybe who you’re associating yourself with, and there were certainly some questionable decisions on that came up in the release of these files, but there was also other, you know, personal information that…”
Buffett then interjected: “Yeah. No, he had and – which he admitted to… I would say that, you know, I would - I have known some pretty wonderful people, and I still know some wonderful people. I don’t think they have made every decision correctly.”
When asked why Buffett had stopped giving to the Gates Foundation if he held that opinion, the investor explained: “I reevaluated my whole situation, just like I have been doing since I was in my 20s. And we’d gotten married, Susie and I, and we didn’t really have any money, but we did know that we intended to live fine, and we intended to have a family.
“And - but we did not have aspirations of having six houses or a 500-foot yacht or anything of the sort. So, even then, we talked about what we would do philanthropically. But my idea and conviction was that I would compound money at a better rate than society generally, and that Susie would give it away better than 99.9% of the people that were giving it away, and she would get involved personally with the gifts, whereas I like to do things wholesale and she liked to do things retail. So we had a plan, but we didn’t have any money… and I thought that was a good decision. I think it was a decent decision. But I did not think my kids were in any way ready to give away vast sums of money. We’d started – Susie and I started with them. I think we gave them – we may have given them $100,000 each.”
