Left-wing billionaire George Soros has transferred nearly $18 billion of his fortune to his
Open Society Foundations over the last several years, making it one of the world’s largest organizations for political activism and philanthropy.
According to the
Wall Street Journal, the transferred money accounts for the majority of his fortune. The Journal notes that Open Society has now joined the “top ranks” of philanthropic organizations, appearing to become the “second largest” in the United States by assets, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Soros gained his wealth as an investor and hedge fund manager and has since become a leading backer of liberal causes and political candidates, including Hillary Clinton.
The move could be part of a plan to make sure Soros’s political activism continues after he passes away.
Open Society’s 2017 budget is
$940.7 million, covering all major continents and 10 broad “programmatic themes,” according to their website.
The foundation has been the subject of controversy for its work in the United States for supporting controversial causes such as Planned Parenthood and Black Lives Matter.
Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support groups that emboldened the on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to 2015
tax filings of his nonprofit foundation.
Back in 2014, the foundation also contributed $1.4 million to help pass California’s Proposition 47, a bill that reduced charges of drug possession and minor theft to misdemeanors.
Soros has also donated to groups fighting the implementation of U.S. voter ID laws, which Democrats say discourage minorities from voting, and Republicans say can protect against voter fraud.
In the United States, he has helped organize opposition to President Donald Trump. Recently, it was found that he donated to anti-Trump “resistance” organization The Center for Community Change Action,
according to tax forms obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Soros has been a key financier behind many revolutions around the world and has also played a significant role in the crashing currencies of countries, including most famously in 1992 when he famously “broke the bank of England.”
Soros is described as a “financial terrorist” in a Chinese military
document, “Unrestricted Warfare,” which was penned in 1999 by two then-colonels and has become a foundational document of the Chinese regime’s asymmetrical hybrid warfare programs.
