Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said he has not talked to his longtime friend, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, since he was engulfed in a scandal over his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
The retired Berkshire Hathaway CEO said it’s been radio silence between the pair since Gates’ involvement with Epstein became clearer earlier this year, following the government’s release of millions of pages of related documents.
“I haven’t talked to him at all since the whole thing was unveiled,” Buffett told CNBC in an interview published Tuesday that included his first public comments on the Epstein files.
“I don’t want to be in the position where I know things,” Buffett added. “I could get called as a witness.” Buffett added he did not want to say much on the topic “until things are resolved.”
Still, the 95-year-old said he was thankful he had never run in the same circles as the disgraced financier and had never met him.
“If I lived in New York at some party,” he may have run into him, said Buffett, who has lived in Omaha for more than 65 years.
Gates and the Epstein files
Among some of the accusations Gates has faced as a result of the documents released this year are that he allegedly had an affair with Mila Antonova, a Russian bridge player, during his marriage to ex-wife Melinda French Gates. He also allegedly gave Epstein permission to act as a fixer to help negotiate the exit of Boris Nikolic, the chief science advisor for the Gates Foundation and at Gates’ investment firm, then called BgC3. Nikolic received a $5 million exit package. Epstein also reportedly played a role in the exit negotiation for Microsoft Windows president Steven Sinofsky, who received $14 million from the company, for which he allegedly paid Epstein a $1 million fee.
“It’s astounding to me that anybody could be that successful as a con person,” Buffett said of Epstein on Tuesday.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, Gates said of Epstein, “In retrospect, I was foolish to spend any time with him.” More recently, Gates apologized to Gates Foundation staff in a town hall last month and acknowledged having two affairs with Russian women, the Journal reported. Epstein later found out about the affairs, Gates said during the meeting, but the affairs didn’t involve victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.
“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates said during the town hall.
The Gates Foundation, for its part, said in a previous statement that a small number of its employees interacted with Epstein to try to secure potential funding for its philanthropy but that “at no time were financial payments made by the foundation to Epstein, nor was he employed by the foundation at any time.”
A spokesperson for Bill Gates said in a statement to Fortune that the Microsoft cofounder was committed to answering all questions and demonstrating he wasn’t part of Epstein’s criminal activity. Earlier this month, Gates, along with seven others, was asked to testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into Epstein.
“Gates has acknowledged it was a serious error in judgment to meet with Epstein,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Buffett did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Billionaire philanthropy shake-up
The friendship between two of the world’s richest men began in 1991, when Gates’ mother, Mary, invited her son to join her and her friends for a gathering at her home, which Buffett had been invited to by Washington Post editor Meg Greenfield. Gates ultimately attended because Greenfield had invited the then-publisher of the Post, Katharine Graham, whom he wanted to meet.
Although Buffett and Gates later said they weren’t particularly excited to meet, they hit it off immediately, leading to a decades-long friendship and close collaboration on the Gates Foundation and the Giving Pledge, which the duo founded with French Gates. French Gates left the Gates Foundation in 2024 and now has her own philanthropic organization, Pivotal, which aims to “accelerate the pace of social progress for women and young people in the U.S. and around the world.”
Still, in recent years, the relationship between the two billionaires has cooled. Buffett stepped down from the Gates Foundation’s board in 2021, saying his “physical participation” was no longer needed for the foundation to reach its goals, following Gates’ announcement of his divorce. Although Buffett has reportedly donated nearly half of the Gates Foundation’s funding, about $43 billion, he told the Wall Street Journal in 2024 that no more of his money would be donated to the foundation following his death.
Although he didn’t elaborate as to why he made the decision to cut off the Gates Foundation after his death, Buffett said most of his remaining wealth after his death will go to a charitable trust overseen by his daughter and two sons, whom he “trusts completely,” according to the Journal.
