Conflicting Accounts Emerge on Bill Gates's Attending AI Impact Summit
New Delhi: Conflicting reports emerged on Tuesday (February 17) over Microsoft founder Bill Gates's participation in the ongoing India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi as the American billionaire faces heat over the Epstein Files. While government sources said to PTI that he will not be attending, the Gates Foundation said to the agency that he will deliver his keynote address as scheduled.
Gates's name figures in the huge tranche of files on millionaire financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released by the US Justice Department on January 30.
His name is not listed among the ‘Visionaries on the Global Stage of Key Attendees’. But the Gates Foundation chair is listed as a keynote speaker for February 19 at 11:50 am.
On Tuesday, government sources said to news agency PTI that he will not be attending the summit.
In an email response, the Gates Foundation said to the news agency that he will be delivering his keynote “as scheduled”.
“Bill Gates is attending the AI Impact Summit. He will be delivering his keynote as scheduled,” a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation said in an emailed response to PTI.
There has not yet been a response from the Union government over whether Gates will participate in the summit.
Earlier on Monday, Gates landed in Andhra Pradesh’s Vijayawada, where he met chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, deputy chief minister Pawan Kalyan and senior state government officials. He was also welcomed at the airport by ministers including Nara Lokesh. Naidu has received condemnation for welcoming Gates.
According to the Financial Times, e-mails from an account that appeared to belong to Epstein claimed that Gates tried to hide a sexually transmitted disease from his wife Melinda after having sex with “Russian girls”. A spokesperson for Gates has called the claims “absolutely absurd and completely false”.
Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. He killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019.
At a press conference on Tuesday, the Congress said that the government was reluctant to openly state whether Gates was attending the summit or if his invitation had been withdrawn in view of his association with Epstein.
“Sources are saying Bill Gates has been disinvited but Bill Gates is saying he is coming. Who are these sources? Sources said that the government of India stands with Epstein's survivors. Why are sources saying this? The prime minister should himself come and say this. Who are they scared of?” said Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera at a press conference in New Delhi.
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