Gates Foundation Sells Stock in Controversial Security Firm

Bill Gates and his charitable foundation have reduced their shares in a global security-services company that has been a target of international campaigners over its ties to Israeli activities in the occupied territories, British daily The Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post write.

The Microsoft co-founder and world’s richest person had held a 3.2-percent stake in U.K.-based G4S, worth some $167-million, through his private investment vehicle and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. According to a stock filing on Wednesday, his holding has been sold down to less than 3 percent, the minimum at which investors must declare their stake in a company.

Pro-Palestinian activists have called on major investors and institutions to divest from G4S, which has contracts with Israeli prisons in the Palestinian territories and supplies surveillance equipment for West Bank checkpoints. Spokespeople for the Gates foundation and Cascade Investment, Mr. Gates’s private vehicle, could not be reached for comment.