1 of 2 | Then-Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Borge Brende attends the Conference for Peace and Security in Iraq at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris in 2014. Brende, now the CEO of the World Economic Forum, is under investigation by his Davos, Switzerland-based employer for his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. File Photo by David Silpa/UPI | License Photo
The World Economic Forum announced it’s investigating CEO Børge Brende for his friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Last week’s documents dump from the U.S. Department of Justice included some that showed Brende had attended at least three “business dinners” with Epstein and traded text messages and emails with him.
Brende will keep his titles as president and CEO of the organization based in Davos, Switzerland, during the investigation, the Forum said.
“This decision underscores the Forum’s commitment to transparency and maintaining its integrity,” it said in a statement. It added that Brende “fully supports, and cooperates with, this review, having indeed requested it himself.”
Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister, has been at the helm of the Forum since 2017.
He denied knowing Epstein most recently in November, but admitted to knowing him once the documents were released last week.
Epstein, a wealthy financier with his own private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in July 2019 before dying by suicide in jail.
Brende said he was “completely unaware of Epstein’s past and criminal activities” and said he wouldn’t have had contact with him if he had known.
“I recognize that I could have conducted a more thorough investigation into Epstein’s history, and I regret not doing so,” Politico reported he said.
The dinners with Epstein happened in 2018 and 2019, after Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute in 2008, and he became a registered sex offender in 2009. In 2018, Epstein called Brende a “good friend” in an email to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
