Bill Gates said in a new interview he wishes that he had not met with Jeffrey Epstein about donations to the MIT Media Lab.
Gates told Axios Monday that he did not have a “business or personal relationship” with Epstein, the billionaire financier who was charged with sex trafficking crimes earlier this year and died by suicide last month, according to authorities.
But Gates met with Epstein and made a $2 million donation to the MIT Media Lab at Epstein’s request in 2014, The New Yorker reported earlier this month. The donation was made anonymously and without restrictions, according to Axios.
{mosads} “I wish I hadn’t met him,” Gates told Axios.
Gates denied that he “knew [Epstein] that well, because he was introduced to me as somebody who could bring more people onto philanthropy.” Gates said there were “meetings along those lines,” but “that didn’t materialize, and so then I stopped meeting with him.”
The MIT Media Lab was criticized for attempting to conceal Epstein’s role in fundraising for the institution after The New Yorker released its report finding that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in the school’s donor database, he continued to give the lab gifts and consulted on how they should spend funds.
Emails uncovered by The New Yorker also show that the lab attempted to conceal Epstein’s role.
MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito resigned earlier this month after The New Yorker’s report.