Billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said in an interview with CNN broadcast internationally on Monday that he intends to donate most of his fortune while alive to charitable causes.
It is the first time that the 58-year-old businessman publicly assumes this commitment, since he has not signed the “Donation Pledge”, an initiative launched in 2010 by the Americans Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, which encourages millionaires to donate more than half of their wealth for philanthropic purposes.
According to the Bloomberg agency, Jeff Bezos currently owns 124,000 million dollars (about 120 million euros), which makes him the fourth richest person in the world. He once topped the richest list, but his fortune, largely tied to Amazon, has shrunk as the company’s shares plunged last year.
Jeff Bezos is also the owner of the Washington Post newspaper, the space company Blue Origin and the Bezos Earth Fund, a fund dedicated to the planet that he launched in 2020, endowing it with 10 billion dollars.
The ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott, whose fortune is estimated at around 24,000 million dollars, has already promised to donate at least half to charity, when she signed in 2019, shortly after the divorce, the “Pledge of Donation” .
Scott rocked the world of philanthropy in early 2021, donating $6 billion to various organizations with no restrictions or requirements attached to his contributions.
Source: TSF
