COLUMBUS – Ohio State University will donate over $300,000 in contributions linked to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to the Ohio Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Initiative.
A review released by the university on Thursday identified $336,000 in donations and pledges received from Jeffrey Epstein and his foundation. The donations went to the Wexner Center for the Arts, a museum bearing the family name of billionaire L Brands Leslie Wexner.
“All of the donations in question were made to the Wexner Center for the Arts at least two decades ago and many years before any questions about Epstein surfaced. However, the university has determined that, in light of Epstein’s reprehensible crimes, retaining these gifts would not be consistent with the university’s values. Accordingly, Ohio State will contribute $336,000 to the Ohio Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Initiative.” -statement from The Ohio State University
“I am grateful for Ohio State’s contribution toward my office’s Human Trafficking Initiative, as the fight against human trafficking is multifaceted and everyone has a role to play.” -Ohio Attorney General David Yost
Epstein worked as Wexner’s personal money manager in the late 1980s.
The review was ordered after Epstein’s arrest last year on federal sex trafficking charges. He was convicted and died in prison.
The review turned up documentation of $260,000 gifts were received from the J. Epstein Foundation from 1990 to 1997 but an additional document noted a potential total of $335,000 in gifts. While the review could not confirm receipt of the additional $75,000 pledged, the university opted to make the donation based on the larger figure, according to the university’s statement.
A 2007 gift of $2.5 million from a foundation where Epstein served as a director and, which supported a renovation of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, originated from the Wexner Children’s Trust and the Leslie H. Wexner Charitable Fund and not from Jeffrey Epstein, the review concluded.