[afro-nets] LA Times story on Gates Foundation

[Garance Upham <g_upham@club-internet.fr>]

LA Times story on Gates Foundation
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(EXCERPTS)


Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Times Staff
Writers - January 7, 2007

In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment
holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps
vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene
its good works.

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 serious pollution there, beyond anything
permitted in the United States or Europe.

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. The investment managers
have 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.