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The Epstein Chronicles
Jeffrey Epstein’s Post-Conviction Reinvention Through Global Institutions (Part 2) (5/11/26)
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The newly released emails and internal communications detailed by https://fortune.com/2026/05/09/jeffrey-epstein-international-peace-institute-ipi-gates-foundation/?utm_source=chatgpt.com paint a picture of Jeffrey Epstein using the prestige of the...
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What's up, everyone? And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to pick up where we left off with a Fortune article talking about Jeffrey Epstein, the UN and Bill Gates. Once again, this article was authored by Jessica Matthews. It was Jeffrey Epstein who first introduced the Gates foundation and IPI Epstein via his friendship with its president, Rob Larson, and had already been tied to IPI for a few years. By 2011, Rod Larson was visiting Epstein's house in New York City and had stayed in his home in Paris and visited the island. In 2013, he personally borrowed 130,000 from Epstein, as was first reported by the investigative outlet DN and later confirmed in DOJ emails. Emails released earlier this year by the Department of Justice show the extent to which the relationship was professionally intertwined. Yeah, it was a very deep relationship. Now, I know Terry Larson wants to lie here and say that that's not true, but we have the evidence to see for ourselves. And nobody's writing those kinds of emails back and forth if they're not buddies. Rod Larson regularly turned to Epstein for fundraising advice and sent him private IPI documents or exchanges. To review. Several other IPI employees, including the director of its Vienna office, corresponded with Epstein via email. Epstein sponsored a fellowship with IPI in 2012, and an email shows that IPI was trying to arrange payment to Epstein for serving on IPI's Mongolian Presidential Advisory Board, where Epstein and a group of others gave direct advice to the then Mongolian president. I can't even pronounce this guy's name. Something, something. Elba Gorge. No idea. But like, what's Epstein doing in Mongolia? I thought he was just a lone predator, just a guy with some messed up proclivities who, you know, might have targeted a couple of people, but that's it. Meanwhile, this MFER is in the middle of all kinds of crazy shit. Whether it's the Promise software, whether it's Africa, whether it's Mongolia, whether it's. Whether it's Afghanistan. There's no far flung province that Epstein wasn't interested in. By the time that Epstein introduced Bill Gates to IPI senior leadership In March of 2013, around the time of a meeting at the residence of then Nobel Committee Chair Thorburn Jagland, Epstein had already been working behind the scenes to secure the donation. And he'd also been working to try and get Bill Gates that Nobel Peace Prize. Remember, that's what Bill Gates wanted. That's what he was chasing. And he was trying to use Epstein to get there. He'd Been corresponding with Boris Nikolic, Bill Gates, then advisor and someone who regularly interfaced with Epstein about ipi, sending him information about the Institute and its work to eradicate polio for Nikolic to relay to Gates at the end of 2012. Email show. Over the next several months, Epstein would work meticulously, reviewing and editing emails to Gates foundation employees and pushing Nikolic about the donation. I thought he wasn't that close to them. Isn't that what Nikolic told us? Meanwhile, Nikolic was one of the backups when it comes to executors for Epstein's will. And Nikolic is another dude that's out here talking about, oh, I hardly knew the guy. You're not going to be made the executor of a will of somebody that doesn't know you. Over the next several months, Epstein would work meticulously, reviewing and editing emails to Gates foundation employees and pushing Nikolic about the donation. In a statement to Fortune, a spokesperson for Nikolage said as emails showed, discussions between IPI and the foundation focused on expanding polio vaccine access in underserved areas. Declining to comment further, Bill approved the 5 million Epstein wrote to the head of IPI's Vienna office when giving her advice about an upcoming conversation with the foundation. Ask them if they read your analysis of the situation, he said. Epstein's efforts were fruitful. In 2013, the Gates foundation committed $5 million to IPI to support polio eradication and Epstein himself emailed Nikolic the wiring instructions for the money. Oh, I'm sure it all went to polio. I'm sure nobody patted their pockets. Do you really think Jeffrey Epstein didn't get pieced off? Of all people, you already know that Epstein made some money on that deal. It wouldn't stop there. Over the next seven years, between 2013 and 2020, the Gates foundation donated more than eight and a half million to IPI. Public records from the foundation show. And I'm sure all of it's on the up and up, right? I'm sure none of it came from ill gotten gains and I'm sure all of it was routed exactly where it was supposed to go. Oh wait, that didn't happen. Got it. At the onset, emails released by the Department of Justice show that Nikolic was trying to speed up the grant making process, which he said in an email typically took six to nine months. We're trying to accelerate, he wrote in an email to Epstein and the head of IPI's Vienna office in August of 2013. Within one month of that email, several IPI staffers flew out to Seattle to meet with Gates foundation and in October the five million grant was awarded and two and a half million was wired to ipi. And boy, I wonder where it went from there. Do you really think it went to people who needed polio vaccines in Africa or whatever? Highly doubt that. At least one employee of the Gates foundation was surprised by the speed with which the foundation moved forward with the ipi. A former employee at the foundation at the time who worked on the organization's polio eradication strategy recalls running into someone from IPI approximately a month after they first heard about the talks and was surprised to learn that the person was already laying the groundwork for it. I thought it was rather quick for a higher level grant. What employees at the foundation did not know is that Epstein had been using multiple channels and and personal connections over several years to try to influence Bill Gates. As Fortune has detailed in earlier reporting, Epstein would get involved lining up another donor to IPI2. In 2014, the private equity scion Leon Black made two personal donations totaling $950,000 to the Think tank. Donations Epstein was corresponding and asking about email show and the reason things move so quickly is because it's not on the up and up. Everything's decided and everything that comes after is performative. As it turns out, there would be some favors Epstein would want from IPI in return for his generosity. What have I told you about Epstein? The guy didn't do things out of the kindness of his heart. He did it because he thought he could benefit. And when it comes to the ipi, United nations or anywhere else, that certainly was the case. In August of 2018, Marna, the foreign assistant in her 20s at the time, texted Epstein that she had heard back from the Swiss embassy in Washington as she was trying to secure her student visa. Her papers had not been approved. Within 15 minutes, Epstein had messaged Rod Larson, who had previously agreed to help with the visa. Rod Larson responded to Epstein within five minutes saying he would reach out to an ambassador and ask him to speak to the Consul General. Soon after, Epstein and Rod Larson had apparently come up with a solution. Epstein texted Marna. You've been working for International Peace Institute Terry Larson. He wrote Marna, seemingly confused, asked if the message was meant to her. Yes, if you get a call, that's the story you need to tell. Immigration fraud, just like I told you. Now there's proof of it and just another clue that we're on the right track. Once we sniff something out around these parts, chances are it's true. And when it comes to immigration fraud, I don't know how anyone could deny that. Other women, however, had more direct connections to ipi. While an exact tally of women in Epstein's orbit who work for IPI could not be learned, Fortune confirmed two of Epstein's assistants, including Posadaiva, held roles at staff at ipi and additional email exchanges reviewed by Fortune show that Epstein either floated as a potential career opportunity or a means to secure a visa application for at least two more. So who was approving all of it and whoever approved it? Those are the people that need to be looked at. Who signed it and why. Epstein's numerous attempts to leverage the connection he had secured for Rod Larson's organization would ultimately capture the attention of of authorities. In December of 2019, a liaison prosecutor from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign affairs sent a memo to the U. S Department of Justice. According to an email exchange within the files, this was several months after Epstein had died by suicide, allegedly in New York after being arrested by the Department of Justice. The memo included testimony from an IPI employee saying that the individual and had been asked on more than one occasion to attend a very short term trainees from Eastern Europe during their time working at IPI between 2014 to 2016. These trainees were all young, beautiful females and without the education required to work at the think tank, the memo read, adding that some of the women took pictures at the UN that were later sent to Epstein. Look, I think we can put the debate to bed when it comes to Epstein being a trafficker or not, it's obvious what he was doing. Now if you want to discuss the scale, you want to discuss just how large ranging it was, cool, we can discuss that. But you can't show up to the conversation without admitting the facts. And the facts are Jeffrey Epstein and his buddies over at ipi. We're trafficking these girls well incorporated into our investigation and or follow up as as appropriate, the Assistant U.S. attorney General for the Southern District of New York wrote in response to receiving the information from the Department of Justice liaison prosecutor who passed it along in a January 2014 exchange with a woman whose name is redacted in the records apart from her initial M. Epstein offered up work at IPI as one of his many ideas he had for her. Also Peace Institute in Vienna found Sounds like a great idea Em responded to Epstein. Please tell me more details. I still receive my options from my booker, but modeling is not my goal anymore. Thank you for the great offers and aid. Oh yeah, I'm sure it was a great offer and great aid. What he's really doing is hustling this girl to get her to do what he wants her to do. Posadaeva had a degree from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and had been modeling for a European fashion brand. But before meeting Epstein, who had helped her secure a U S visa and secure her housing, as the Wall Street Journal first reported, Posadiva would work at IPI on and off between 2012 and 2016, she recalls. Emails she shared with Fortune show notes she took from a meeting she sat in with Azerbaijan President Ilam Aliyev. As well as attending a trip to Kazakhstan, Posadiva was also included in logistical correspondence regarding a trip that former U.S. treasury Secretary Larry Summers took on behalf of IPI. I felt like I was so out of place, she told Fortune about her time attending the pandemics conference. People were making comments that I looked very young and yo knowing everything we know about these people, are you really comfortable that they're the ones that are holding pandemic conferences? Pretty terrifying if you ask me. A separate Russian model and Epstein assistant named Ada, whose real name Fortune is withholding in an effort to protect her privacy, also got a job as a result of the Epstein IPI connection. She worked at IPI as an intern, a full time employee in a newly created External relations assistant position, then a volunteer due to her visa status for more than two years, according to the woman's offer letters of employment as well as an email to Rod Larson from an IPI employee that outlined the woman's role and how much she had cost IPI during her time at the organization. Total expense to IPI between October 2016 and July 2018 was an estimated $71,000, the employee wrote to Rod Larson in February of 2019. Epstein confirmed in an email exchange with Ada that he was bankrolling Ada's salary at IPI himself. Didn't you give them 100k for my full time employment? Ada asked Epstein in January of 2018. You're right, he responded. During her time at IPL, Ada gave Epstein updates about her work at the think tank and alerted him when she had co published an article about water conservancy on IPI's site. My first piece on water published, ada enthusiastically emailed Epstein in April of that year. She would go on to co byline another Q and A as well. In one exchange, Epstein even floated a job directly at the Gates Foundation. You could work for the Human Rights Commission in Stroudsburg, Gates foundation and Ivory coast etcetera he wrote in an email in January 2014 about a potential summer internship. IPI proved to be a particularly alluring opportunity to some of his assistants due to its affiliation with high profile institutions like the United nations and the Gates Foundation. Those are some of the most respected international organizations in the philanthropic world, posadiva said. Posadiva shared an email with Fortune that she had sent to her mother in 2012, who was still in Russia, where she excitedly told her that Epstein had relayed that conversations with IPI seemed to be moving forward. Epstein dangled opportunities to perpetuate sexual abuse and recruit more women into the fold, the former assistant Marna explains. Epstein would find something each of us wanted, something appealing, and use it as leverage. Sometimes he would actually deliver an internship at IPI or a semester or a course at a good school, and whenever he did this for someone, he made sure to brag about it to everyone else, she said. He would then use the promise of providing something similar, the mirage of it to continue the abuse, to keep the women tethered to him and to pressure them into recruiting others. Wait a minute, I didn't think that happened. I thought this was just a lone wolf. Oh, wait, it's not. That such established institutions could end up so intertwined with the sex offender is now puzzling insiders who were never aware the organization they work for had any ties to Epstein until earlier this year. Oh, give me a break. I've been talking about the IPI and the Gates foundation, and Epstein for years have a clue about Epstein. So says a former employee at the Gates foundation who says they were shocked to learn that Epstein had been involved in the IPI grant, and he corresponded with Gates since the latest batch of the Epstein files. Bill Gates issued an apology to foundation staff during a town hall in February over his personal correspondence and interactions with Epstein and the reputational risk it has posed on the foundation's work. As first reported by the Wall Street Journal in March, the foundation commissioned an external review to assess its past engagement with Epstein and to review its current policy for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships. That review is underway, and we expect the board and management will receive an update this summer, the foundation wrote in a statement that was published in April. Too little, too late, and if I was anybody who was abused by Epstein and any of these institutions had any part in it, I'd sue them. Rob Larson resigned as president and CEO of IPI in 2020, the same month that information of his ties to Epstein was first reported by the investigative outlet DN in the weeks since the latest release of the DOJ documents from the Epstein files, Rod Larsen's wife, Mona Jewell, resigned as Norway's ambassador to Jordan and and Iraq. And Norwegian authorities have opened corruption investigations into the two of them. Well, yeah, they were obviously corrupt. In statements, both individuals have denied the charges. Their son, Edward Jewel Rod Larson, whom Epstein mentored and left $5 million in his will, died by suicide in April. I'm not going to really talk on that too much because I don't know enough about it. And I'm not going to dive into a topic like somebody taking their own life and say it's all about Epstein when I don't know. But what I will say is this. If anybody out there is contemplating doing that, there's options, man. Reach out, talk to somebody. Send an email, call. Call somebody, whatever it might be. You're not alone out there, and there's people out there that actually care about you. I know it's hard to believe, but there are people out there that care. And the world's a better place with all of you in it. The lawyer representing Rod Larson, John Christian Eldon, said in a statement earlier this year that Rod Larson is currently seriously ill and has recently suffered multiple strokes and is significantly cognitively impaired. This causes major difficulties for him in expressing himself both in writing and orally, and it also complicates the legal team's work in establishing the facts. Eldon wrote. I asked for calm and human consideration towards Rod Larson and his family at this time. Yo, look, I'm not going to pile on, but there's questions that need to be answered. And I feel sorry for Rod Larson, you know, his kid doing what he did and his own health troubles. But that doesn't absolve you of the role that you played in helping Jeffrey Epstein spread his madness at the ipi. There has been a reckoning over its ties to Epstein for several years now. After Rod Larson's resignation, the subsequent acting chief executive of the Institute moved swiftly to address financial ties to Epstein that had begun to surface. The board commissioned an internal forensic audit and made those results public. But the audit focused squarely on the financial trail between Epstein and the think tank. It never mentioned that it was Epstein himself who had brokered one of the Institute's most important granner relationships. And the IPI said that its review had found no evidence of Epstein deriving any personal benefit from IPI in exchange for his donations. Oh, I am sure he just did it for kicks, right? That's exactly who Epstein was It didn't acknowledge that Rod Larson had helped secure visas for women in Epstein's orbit, nor that Epstein had placed Women who who Work forum directly on the IPI payroll and at some of its events or trips. For those women, such as Posadiva, details of their presence at IPI are only just coming to light. Posadiva says that since she has forgiven Rod Larson for his role, she went on to co found a venture capital fundraising platform and says she is proud of her current career. But she says that the IPI job, while impressive on paper, didn't help her in that effort. It was primarily used by Epstein to entice her to stay put. Despite Epstein's promises, Posadiva obtained no real experience, work or connections to start a meaningful career, she says. Indeed, the gaps in her resume seemed to widen the longer she stayed with him, and she felt trapped. I didn't see a way out for myself. And look folks, I think that story is pretty common when it comes to Epstein and how he was running this hustle. But now we have people coming forward and telling you exactly how it went down and that Jeffrey Epstein was indeed trafficking women. And in a story that's full of doubt, there's no doubt about that. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.