Larry Summers, the former chief economist at the World Bank is named in the Epstein files. And the organisation he represented for decades also secured a seat on Trump’s “Board of Peace” (Board of Genocide would be more fitting).

These connections are not accidental. Summers embodies the ideology of the Western ruling elite – exploiting the Global South under the guise of ‘free markets’.

Cosy with Epstein

Summers’ cordial exchanges with serial child rapist, Epstein, have not gone unrecognised. History will remember him as one of Epstein’s “wing men”.

Up until 2019, Summers engaged in multiple friendly email exchanges with Epstein. The released Epstein files show Summers asking the convicted sex offender for relationship advice and the probability of “getting horizontal” with a woman the seedy pair named “peril”.

On the work front, Epstein acted as a “Davos concierge” – in the words of Bloomberg – brokering meetings for Summers among others. The serial rapist was also directly looped into discussions about a World Bank staff appointment in 2013. Importantly, the subject line read: “World Bank Assignment – Ms. [Redacted] – Letter of Appointment.”

Attached to the email, is a letter of appointment for the new staffer and a link to the World Bank’s internal systems. Epstein’s network, other emails have shown, kept a close eye on World Bank operations.

The late rapists bromance with Summer’s, granted him unrivalled, free-of-cost visibility into the World Bank decision-making. Furthermore, it possibly granted visibility into the bank’s spending too, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.

The World Bank’s answer to Mandelson

So why does Summers matter? Think of him as the World Bank’s very own Peter Mandelson – master puppeteer, omnipresent, unaccountable, and always pulling the strings.

Like Mandelson, his web ran deep, recognised as a key architect in shaping US fiscal policy, particularly overseas. He served as Chief Economist at the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. Then, he climbed up the ranks of the US treasury under Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001. After a stint as Harvard president, he joined hedge fund D.E. Shaw. Later, he returned to government as an economic advisor to Barak Obama. Most recently, he was on the Board of OpenAI and, unsurprisingly, wrote for the New York Times.

During his tenure at the World Bank, Summers wrote a 1991 memo calling developing countries under-polluted and encouraging polluters in dirty industries to expand their footprint. Meanwhile, Summers has since claimed that the memo was just a joke (cue tumbleweed).

The pollution memo was not an isolated incident. During the Clinton years, Summers was a key figure in resisting US involvement in the Kyoto Protocols. Additionally, he was a consistent roadblock to meaningful climate action.

World Bank handed money bags in Gaza

Fast-forward to 2026, and the World Bank’s record hasn’t gotten any better. Ecocide has accelerated, Gaza is burning, and the World Bank sits comfortably on Trump’s “Board of Peace” – betraying its very mandate. The bank has established the Gaza Reconstruction and Development Fund, which they say will hold and manage donor money.

At a recent Board of Peace meeting, World Bank President Ajay Banga made clear where the institution’s loyalties lie. Addressing American donors directly, he stated:

US donors deserve the right to know that the money is being used in a transparent way. We are helping along with the board of peace which takes the ownership of ensuring that the right kind of financial legal and oversight mechanisms are being put in place.

The same institution that once theorised about dumping toxic waste on the poor now pulls the levers of Gaza’s reconstruction funds. With Banga sitting alongside Epstein-linked figures like Trump and Blair, it’s clear that Palestinians are not the priority. Instead, it’s just another get-rich scheme built on the backs of the Global South.

As openDemocracy has exposed, the World Bank and IMF have:

for decades been part of a well-orchestrated scheme to keep previously-colonized countries in a never-ending cycle of debt, misuse of funds, and large-scale plunder of Global South wealth.

With Trump salivating over critical minerals, the World Bank’s imperial complicity must be interrogated. A 2025 World Development study shows the Bank for decades has been pushing for mining deregulation across the Global South.

The World Bank’s function as a tool for extractivism by the Western elite is clear – actively contributing to the dispossession of indigenous communities and environmental ruination.

The same elite networks with fingers in multiple pies – World Bank, Davos, Wall Street (to name but a few) – shouldn’t be the ones deciding who gets loans, who gets contracts, and who gets bombed – yet here we are.

Featured image via the Canary

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