After Joichi “Joi” Ito resigned from his post as director of the MIT Media Lab following revelations of his connections with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, Boston-based Puretech Health announced this morning that he has also resigned from his position as chairman of that company’s board of directors.
After Joichi “Joi” Ito resigned from his post as director of the MIT Media Lab following revelations of his connections with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, Boston-based Puretech Health announced this morning that he has also resigned from his position as chairman of that company’s board of directors.
Daphne Zohar, founder and chief executive officer of PureTech, said in a brief statement that following Ito’s resignation at MIT, the company agreed that his resignation from the PureTech board was appropriate. Ito resigned from MIT following the revelation that the group hid Epstein’s involvement with the organization despite the public knowledge he was a sex offender. On Friday, The New Yorker reported that the lab continued to accept donations from Epstein and hid his involvement despite the fact that Epstein had been listed as “disqualified” as a donor by MIT.
According to the report, Epstein helped secure more than $7.5 million in donations to the lab and was in direct communication with Ito on how the funds could be used. That amount is much higher than Ito had previously disclosed, The New Yorker reported. Ito had previously admitted Epstein provided $1.75 million in total to the lab.
What’s more, the report showed that Ito hid Epstein’s involvement and marked the donations as anonymous. Also, in internal emails which New Yorker obtained, Ito referred to Epstein as Voldemort, the evil wizard from the Harry Potter series whose name was something not to be uttered in the stories.
Following the publication of The New Yorker story, MIT President L. Rafael Reif published an open letter calling the accusations “extremely serious” and “disturbing.” Following the report, Reif said he asked the college’s general counsel to organize an independent investigation into Epstein’s involvement with the Media Lab and also announced Ito’s resignation as head of the lab and from his position as a professor at MIT.
MIT previously disclosed it had received about $800,000 from Epstein over the course of 20 years. At the time that was revealed, Reif said acceptance of the Epstein gifts involved a “mistake of judgment” that helped elevate Epstein’s status in the wider community
. Reif had promised to donate those funds to a community group that benefits people who were sexually abused.
Following the revelation, PureTech acted swiftly. This morning, the company said current board member, Chris Viehbacher will act as interim chair. Viehbacher is the managing partner of Gurnet Point Capital and the former chief executive officer of Sanofi and former chairman of Genzyme. Prior to joining Sanofi, Viehbacher spent 20 years at GlaxoSmithKline, ultimately serving as president of GSK’s North American pharmaceutical division and as a member of the board of directors of GSK plc.
