Borge Brende, president of the Davos Economic Forum, resigns over his ties to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

The Forum, held annually in Davos, confirmed the departure of the executive after eight and a half years in office and announced that another member of the board of directors, Alois Zwingiwill be the new interim president and CEO.

“The Board of Directors will supervise the leadership transitionincluding the plan to promote an appropriate process to identify a permanent successor,” said the co-chairs of this body, the Swiss pharmaceutical industry magnate André Hoffmann and the president of the American investment company Black Rock, Larry Fink.

Brende communicated his decision through a note after documents in the possession of the United States Department of Justice came to light showing that He had three business dinners with Epstein. The former Norwegian politician, Foreign Minister between 2013 and 2017, also communicated with the convicted pedophile via emails and text messages.

The last contact, according to Epstein’s papers, occurred in June 2019, a few weeks before the American millionaire was arrested in New York for exploitation of minors. “I’m looking forward to it,” Brende confessed about a visit to the mansion of the pedophile in Manhattan where abuses were recorded.

In the statement, in which Epstein is not mentioned at any time, Brende justified the resignation, adopted after “careful reflection”, by the need to ensure that the Davos Forum get on with your work “without distractions”. The former president had until now denied being aware of the pedophile’s criminal activities before meeting him in 2018.

According to the statement attributed to Fink and Hoffmann, the investigation concluded and made it possible to determine that “there were no additional reasons for concern beyond what had previously been revealed.”

The first recognized meeting between Brende and Epstein – to which the former has stated that he was invited by the former Norwegian deputy prime minister, Terje Rød-Larsen- It took place in 2018, ten years after Epstein was convicted of prostitution of minors.

Brende said in his farewell that during the years he was at the helm, “a record number of partners joined the World Economic Forum” and that collaboration with “government leaders from around the world (was) like never before.”