How Jeffrey Epstein leveraged a prestigious U.N.-affiliated nonprofit—and the Gates Foundation—to control women and keep them in his orbit

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 with Fortune, 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