ABOVE: The Cayman Islands sometimes serve as a tax haven.
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Many big-name research funders place millions of dollars in offshore investments, which in turn may drive activities that run contrary to the causes the charities promote, according to an investigative report published today (December 6) in Science.
The investigation covered the investments of seven of the world’s largest science funders. Of those, six charities—the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation—were found to have offshore investments that, combined, totaled at least $5 billion in recent years. The one charity that was not found to invest offshore is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
For his investigation, Charles Piller, a contributing correspondent for Science’s news department, relied on publicly available tax returns and financial statements ...
