Klaus Schwab spent 54 years turning a Swiss ski resort into the power center of global elitism.
His hand-picked successor just resigned – and Jeffrey Epstein put him there.
Now the organization that wants to run the world is facing a question nobody at Davos wants to answer.
Borge Brende Resignation Exposes the Epstein Files Fallout at the Top of the WEF
On February 26, WEF President and CEO Børge Brende resigned after documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed he had attended three business dinners with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and exchanged emails and text messages with him.
One 2019 message showed Epstein sending Brende what appeared to be a photo of a woman with a vulgar nickname.
Brende served as Norway's foreign minister when Epstein's 2008 conviction was already public record. His defense – "I was completely unaware of his criminal actions" – has convinced no one.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008. The conviction was covered worldwide. A man holding Norway's top diplomatic post had every reason and every resource to run a basic background check before breaking bread with an American financier he'd never met.
Brende joins a growing list of global elites whose careers have been shredded by the Epstein files: Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Tom Pritzker, Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathy Ruemmler, DP World CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, and Apollo Global Management's Leon Black. None have been charged with crimes.
The WEF's independent investigation concluded there were "no additional concerns beyond what had been previously disclosed." That's the organizational version of saying the problem is managed. It isn't.
Klaus Schwab Scandal Set the Stage and Epstein Finished the Job
Brende's departure follows founder Klaus Schwab's ouster in April 2025 – a resignation that came only after an independent probe into whistleblower allegations of more than $1.1 million in questionable travel expenses billed to the WEF.
Investigators found Schwab and his wife billed WEF for personal luxury travel to Venice, Miami, and the Seychelles. The couple's maid's cell phone went on the organization's tab. Gifts received in violation of WEF policy – fur coats, personalized Tiffany cufflinks – piled up while donors funded the operation.
The WEF board ultimately cleared Schwab of "material wrongdoing" while acknowledging "minor irregularities stemming from blurred lines between personal contributions and Forum operations." Translation: he was spending donor money on his household and calling it organizational commitment.
This isn't a coincidence. It's what happens when an institution convinces itself it is above accountability because its mission is important enough.
The Globalist Agenda Behind Davos Left American Workers Paying the Price
For decades, the WEF sold a vision of managed globalism: experts from government, finance, and multinational corporations gathering in the Swiss Alps to coordinate the world's future.
What it delivered was a hollowed-out American manufacturing base, energy dependence on adversaries, and a policy framework that consistently enriched the attendees at the expense of the workers they claimed to represent.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it plainly at this year's Davos meeting: "Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It's a failed policy. It is what the WEF has stood for."
While the forum preached net-zero energy mandates it could never fund and ESG frameworks that rewarded ideology over performance, China cornered one-third of the world's renewable energy supply.
Europe agreed to carbon targets without the manufacturing capacity to meet them. American workers watched their factories disappear while WEF delegates applauded the efficiency of the global labor market from the Congress Center in the Swiss Alps.
Argentinian President Javier Milei told Davos what it didn't want to hear in 2024: "Those who are supposed to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty."
Since Milei took office in 2023, Argentina's inflation has dropped from more than 200% to 32%.
Larry Fink Now Runs Davos and He Invented the ESG Agenda That Hurt You
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink now runs the World Economic Forum as interim co-chair.
Fink spent years lecturing American corporations about ESG mandates that told energy companies to stop drilling and start filing diversity reports. The result: Europe froze while begging for Russian gas, American energy jobs vanished, and BlackRock collected management fees on trillions in assets the entire time.
The man who helped offshore America's economic future is now in charge of reforming the organization that designed the policy.
Fink opened the 2026 Davos conference by admitting the forum had become a self-congratulatory club out of touch with the world it claims to govern. "For many people, this meeting feels out of step with the moment," he said. He acknowledged the WEF operates under "deep institutional distrust."
He should. The WEF's problem was never a lack of dialogue. It was a surplus of unaccountable elites who made catastrophic decisions for everyone else and paid no price for any of them – until Jeffrey Epstein's files started doing what elections never could.
Two leaders gone in less than a year. The most powerful unelected body on earth can't survive basic scrutiny. Maybe that's the point.
Sources:
- Simon Constable, "World Economic Forum Faces Fresh Scrutiny as Epstein Ties Revive Past Scandals, Criticism," Fox News, March 14, 2026.
- Tyler O'Neil, "World Economic Forum Probes Klaus Schwab," The Daily Signal, April 23, 2025.
- Lily Mae Lazarus, "World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab and His Wife Cashed in on Davos with Over $1 Million in Questionable Travel Expenses," Fortune, July 23, 2025.
- "WEF CEO Børge Brende Steps Down as the Epstein Files Claim Another Top Executive," CNN Business, February 26, 2026.
- "BlackRock's Larry Fink Says Davos Feels 'Out of Step' to Many," Semafor, January 19, 2026.
- R. Cort Kirkwood, "Larry Fink: Making People 'Care' About the WEF Agenda," The New American, January 21, 2026.
