Bill Gates admits Epstein sought a personal relationship. How quaint. As if we needed further confirmation that the tech messiah's orbit was never quite as sanitised as his foundation's press releases implied.
The revelation has prompted the UK's sovereign wealth fund to review all Gates-linked holdings, a move that should have been taken years ago. We are witnessing a belated moment of institutional conscience, but let us not mistake prudential housekeeping for moral clarity. The rot in the corridors of influence has been obvious to anyone who bothered to look beyond the charitable veneer.
The real question is why it took a sovereign fund to act when the public relations apparatus had long since spun the narrative into something palatable. This is not an isolated miscalculation; it is a symptom of an era in which wealth and virtue are treated as synonymous. The Victorians at least had the decency to maintain a hypocritical distinction between private conduct and public image.
Today, we demand our oligarchs be both corrupt and sanctimonious. The UK fund's review is a small, overdue step. But it will not undo the damage: the normalisation of associating with monsters in exchange for access to capital.
The Fall of Rome began not with barbarians at the gates, but with the rot within them. And here we are, still pretending that a few divestments will cleanse the stain.
