On September 12, 2015, more than three dozen health experts and diplomats assembled at the Palais des Nations, the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, for a day-long conference on preparing for pandemics.
The bio book for the event, hosted by the International Peace Institute (IPI)—an acclaimed think tank affiliated with the United Nations that works to settle and prevent armed conflicts and was then run by one of the key architects of the Oslo Accords—was a who’s who of health experts and policymakers. Scheduled attendees and speakers included the director-general of the World Health Organization, president of the Institute of Medicine, the president of the National Academy of Medicine, an associate director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a senior executive from the Gates Foundation (the philanthropic institution that, at the time, made up some 20% of IPI’s contributions).
Among the attendees that gathered that morning in the Palais des Nations for the discussions was Svetlana Pozhidaeva, who, by her own admission, had no expertise in epidemiology or foreign aid. Pozhidaeva, a former Russian model who was then 31, had been a so-called “assistant” to Jeffrey Epstein for about five years. She had shown up to the event wearing a dress Epstein had bought her in Paris and instructed her to wear.
In an interview withFortune, Pozhidaeva said Epstein had told her she would be working closely with both the International Peace Institute and the Gates Foundation to orchestrate the whole event. “I will be in the middle of it, helping coordinate the whole project—that’s how he positioned it to me,” she said.
On paper, that seemed true. Terje Rød-Larsen, who was then CEO of IPI, would go on to sign a personal recommendation letter for Pozhidaeva’s visa application, a copy of which emerged in the Epstein files earlier this year, stating that she held an “active and lead role” coordinating follow-up meetings for the event and that, “without her extraordinary efforts, the fundraising would not have reached the levels it reached.”
Pozhidaeva, however, said she was held at arm’s length from the planning and never given anything to do. She said she went with Epstein to visit the Gates Foundation around that same period, but wasn’t allowed in the meeting. At the pandemics conference, Pozhidaeva recalled feeling like a fifth wheel, with attendees asking what she was doing there.
In hindsight, Pozhidaeva now sees the IPI job Epstein touted to her as “one of the hooks he used to keep me around”—yet another promise of a career opportunity she could only obtain through him that ultimately never materialized.
Pozhidaeva’s experience was part of a larger pattern.
Epstein introduced IPI to the Gates Foundation in 2013, closely advising IPI employees on what to say and how to obtain the initial $5 million donation to IPI, and working behind the scenes with an adviser to then-MicrosoftChairman Bill Gates to stimulate interest and speed up the process. The Gates Foundation would become an extraordinarily significant donor relationship for the next three years, with IRS records showing that donations from the Gates Foundation made up more than 20% of IPI’s annual donations between 2013 and 2015. Epstein would also be involved in gifts totaling $950,000 from private equity titan Leon Black to IPI. In return, Epstein used the leverage he garnered with IPI’s leadership to offer jobs or secure U.S. visa recommendation letters for at least four women in his orbit.
Emails released by the Department of Justice earlier this year, alongside Pozhidaeva and another assistant’s personal accounts, show how Epstein used and leveraged the brands of a respected think tank and one of the most important philanthropic institutions in the world as instruments to control and traffick women—all while he was already known to be a registered sex offender. Except where otherwise noted, mentions of emails, text messages, and documents refer to items released publicly by the DOJ.
After his 2008 conviction for soliciting an underage woman for prostitution, Epstein began recruiting young-looking foreign women over the age of 18 who were abroad or already within the U.S. on the promise of jobs, education, and career opportunities—a patterndocumented by women’s personal accounts andseverallawsuitsin the years since Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell. Often referring to them as his “assistants,” Epstein helped them obtain visas and pay for their accommodation, clothing, and education—later demanding gratitude and obedience to his commands, and conveying that they owed him for his generosity. Sometimes he would pay for or demand that they recruit other women. Many of these assistants were from Russia or Eastern Europe—some of them poor and still learning English—and they became dependent on Epstein for visas, housing, and money. Several of the assistants, including Pozhidaeva and another who shared her personal account withFortune, say they were repeatedly sexually abused by Epstein during the course of their time in his orbit.
Epstein’s regular engagement with politicians and tech executives—and his affiliation with prominent institutions like the International Peace Institute or the Gates Foundation legitimized Epstein, according to Pozhidaeva, and made her hesitant to question whether the career opportunities he was offering were real or not.
“Being able to meet tech executives or prime ministers when you come from a small country or from Russia or Ukraine—it changes your perspective,” she says. “If someone like this comes to [Epstein’s] house, maybe it’s me who doesn’t understand something here.”
Another former assistant, whoFortuneis referring to as Marna in an effort to protect her identity from becoming known, toldFortunein an interview that Epstein’s proximity to important people—and witnessing him leverage those relationships as if they owed him something—made the threats he made, or the stories he told, all feel equally true.
“For a foreign woman in her early 20s with limited English, that framing was extremely powerful,” she said. “It made him seem untouchable.”
