LA Times: Gates Foundation pours money into investments that hurt many of the people it aims to help

[Reterr]

http://www.latimes.com/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,5038924.story?page=1&track=mostviewed-homepage


Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
The world's largest philanthropy pours money into investments that are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help.
By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writers
January 7, 2007


>> The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.

Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation's efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting.

Investigators for Dr. Nonyenim Solomon Enyidah, health commissioner for Rivers State, where Ebocha is located, cite an oil spill clogging rivers as a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers, Enyidah said, "became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases."


>>At the end of 2005, the Gates Foundation endowment stood at $35 billion, making it the largest in the world. Then in June 2006, Warren E. Buffett, the world's second-richest man after Bill Gates, pledged to add about $31 billion in installments from his personal fortune. Not counting tens of billions of dollars more that Gates himself has promised, the total is higher than the gross domestic products of 70% of the world's nations.

Like most philanthropies, the Gates Foundation gives away at least 5% of its worth every year, to avoid paying most taxes. In 2005, it granted nearly $1.4 billion. It awards grants mainly in support of global health initiatives, for efforts to improve public education in the United States, and for social welfare programs in the Pacific Northwest.

It invests the other 95% of its worth. This endowment is managed by Bill Gates Investments, which handles Gates' personal fortune. Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said the investment managers had one goal: returns "that will allow for the continued funding of foundation programs and grant making." Bill and Melinda Gates require the managers to keep a highly diversified portfolio, but make no specific directives.


Lots more in the 5-page, first part of this expose (?).

[BayCityProgressive]

1. When it comes to

corporate doners there is always a catch to their "financial aid".

[elehhhhna]

3. His charity's AIDS drug sponsorships pay for brand-name drugs --

which is coincidentally a very cleve rway of shoring up international patent right enforcement (for the drug co's in this case). International patent rights are a very important issue for his business.

[Tellurian]

4. "but make no specific directives."

or disclosures, not even to Warren Buffett?

A little hard to believe from this side of the pollution.

Shame on you..Give it up, Bill..

[Nomad559]

2. Posted here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3058874

:)