Jeffrey Epstein: the Ultimate Davos Man
Sex Trafficker’s Ghost Haunts Swiss Hamlet
Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach sex abuse conviction and prison time had almost no effect on his global networking. On the contrary, his international stature after 2009 grew exponentially. He collected UN presidents, Gulf Arab potentates, European Union leaders, and industrialists throughout the Obama years and into the first Trump administration.
Among the many overlooked revelations in the Epstein files is that Jeff had a devoted fan club among the European diplomat-technocrat class. Men of a certain metrosexual elite status, often but not always Scandinavian, seem to have been particularly charmed by the uncouth, Brooklyn-accented, private-jet-owning fraudster and raunchy sex trafficker.
It should not, then, come as a surprise that documents reveal that Davos was one of his favorite playgrounds – perhaps “hunting grounds” would be more apt. He was so warmly regarded by World Economic Forum planners that no less an American elite than
…former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers went through Jeff to get an invite to Davos.
Epstein’s relationship with Børge Brende, a Norwegian politician serving as president and CEO of the WEF since 2017, lasted up until his final days of freedom, according to scheduling documents and texts. The men had at least two meetings at Epstein’s New York mansion, in 2018 and 2019. The latter, a dinner chez Jeff, happened on a day back-to-back with appointments for Jeff with redacted individuals, presumably victims and less than a month before his Teterboro arrest.
In September 2018, during the annual UN General Assembly in New York, Brende was scheduled for an 8 pm “Appt” at the Epstein mansion that also included Michael Wolff and Terje Rød-Larsenn, the lionized Oslo Accords diplomat.
Rød-Larsen has since been revealed to have made dozens of visits to Epstein’s pad and to have taken a six-figure loan from the American sex trafficker to purchase a Greek island palazzo.
In June 2019, Brende was again in the U.S., had apparently met Trump at the White House the previous day and, in New York, signed an MOU establishing a strategic partnership between the UN and the WEF. Brende texted Epstein from the Acela: “Just met your friend POTUS.”
“See if you still have your wallet. Im sitting here with Steve,” Epstein replied, presumably referring to Bannon.
“Say hello. And I’ve not got so much too [sic] lose as you,” Brende responded. The following day, he asked if he might arrive to dinner early, to which Epstein replied, “of course.”
(In the same scheduling note for that day, there is a redacted – presumably trafficked – individual scheduled for “hair cut w/ Patrick” and a teeth cleaning.)
The week before Brende’s New York visit, Epstein had let his pal Steve Bannon know about it. “Davos guy on thurs. lots to discus with you. . are you in town?”
Apparently he was.
Jeff’s pals were all “Davos guys.” But Epstein himself was so special that he was granted packs of tickets – or invitations – to pass around as he pleased. In December 2018, a month before Davos 2019, Larry Summers texted Jeff to see if he could score him an invite.
Jeff said no because he had invited six people after being told his cap was four. He advised Summers it was “nothing personal.” The WEF, he said, was prioritizing “sitting rather than former” people – apparently referencing the fact that Summers was a former U.S. Treasury Secretary and a former Harvard president – and demand for invitations was high.
Summers then asked if Jeff could get him an invite for the following year.
And a week after Epstein’s final dinner with Brende, three weeks before he was carted off to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, Epstein told Summers that his invite for Davos 2020 was confirmed.
So Summers was at Davos 2020, thanks to Jeff. There, he pontificated on how Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recession fighting plans were “the last hurrah for central bankers” due to low interest rates. He also discussed the early economic impacts and responses to the emerging pandemic.
By then, Epstein was in sex-trafficker Valhalla. One might hope that on a snowy night in Davos, Summers at least raised a glass of crisp St. Gallen Räuschling to his ticket benefactor, the buddy who gave him advice on seducing a young Chinese economist – but who knows.
Epstein’s position as a Davos macher is evident in other ways. During the January 2018 Davos meeting, Terje Rød-Larsen texted Epstein from the conclave: “Bill Gates is here. Could you ask him if I could see him tomorrow or on Saturday morning? Trump is speaking at 2 pm tomorrow. Macron spoke yesterday. Very good! Borge wants to see you, but prefer Geneva.”
One of the six invites Jeff told Summers he scored for Davos 2019 likely went to his Russian aide-de-camp, former model and woman of mystery Lana Pozhidaeva, who later wrote a Medium post on “My first experience as a female founder at the world’s biggest, most exclusive international conference.”
Another female mentee who hit the Davos jackpot was the Gates Foundation’s Melanie Walker, a former co-chair of the WEF Council on neuro-tech and brain science, who had been in Epstein’s orbit since 1991. In 2012, British academic Jem Bendell said Walker introduced him to Epstein via email, as “a billionaire philanthropist who was prepared to host and fund gatherings of experts,” including WEF Young Global Leaders. Walker attended Davos in 2013.
Epstein’s friend, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, was also an invited guest at multiple Davos conferences. The hacked Barak emails offer a glimpse into Epstein’s networking role there. He and Barak had worked on a plan to bring Mongolia into the Israeli security sphere, and in Davos in 2014, they met with collaborators on that project under the aegis of the International Peace Institute, another American think tank taking Jeff’s money.
At Davos the year after that, Barak shared a candid impression of Peter Thiel “under some drug impact” in the Swiss village:
Thiel was hardly the only Davosian getting wild and crazy in the charmante village. It’s never difficult to imagine what Jeff was getting up to in Europe behind closed doors. In our Freakshow episode “The French Connection,” we detailed how Jeff used Charles de Gaulle airport and his Paris apartment to traffic women from Eastern Europe into Western hands.
But when Davos was underway, he didn’t waste too much time listening to the likes of Summers and Brende drone on about interest rates and hyper-global recessions. There was fun to be had! During Davos 2018, in an exchange with Anil Ambani – industrialist and then the fourth-richest man in India – Epstein referred to his Paris apartment as a “suburb” of Davos.
Anil Ambani: U not in davos
Jeffrey Epstein: No - my Paris house has been suburb of meetings . GREAT fun . No ties or pretense
JE: Though I am tired of bomb sniffing dogs in my bedroom
AA: Enjoy
JE: Many leaders just find it very difficult to grasp trump. While it is obvious but hard to truly believe
JE: Ex . He is not rich
AA: Have fun
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Men of the world!
Scratch a little beneath
the facades and a lot are
pretty disgusting, one
way or another. Power
corrupts absolutely!