George Soros, a US billionaire philanthropist, has delegated control of his $25 billion (£19.9 billion) business and charity enterprise to his son Alex.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the financier of Hungarian descent claimed that his son had “earned it”.
The family’s fortune has been used to promote the democratization efforts in numerous nations ever since the 1990s.
But in recent years, anti-Semitic rumors have focused on the 92-year-old former hedge fund manager.
The specifics of the interview that was released on Sunday were confirmed to the BBC by a Soros representative.
One of the biggest funders to the US Democratic Party is George Soros. His second-youngest child, 37-year-old history graduate Alex, is the youngest of his five kids.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the vehicle handling the $25 billion for the family and the philanthropic foundation is called Soros Fund Management, and Alex is the sole family member on the investment committee.
Alex became the chairman of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) in December. He also oversees his father’s “super PAC,” which is a US system for allocating money to political parties.
Although they have similar political beliefs in general, he told the Wall Street Journal that he is “more political” than his father and that he would work to defeat Donald Trump’s bid for a second term as president of the United States.
“As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too,” stated Alex Soros.
He claimed that the Open Society Foundations would continue to support liberal politicians and work toward the same causes as his father, including minority and refugee rights, criminal justice reform, and free expression. While pursuing a more domestic US-focused agenda, he also wants to incorporate voting rights, abortion, and gender parity policies.
His father, George Soros, was born in Hungary, where he witnessed the tragedy of the Nazi occupation as a young boy between 1944 and 1945. To survive, his family hid their Jewish heritage.
After the war, he fled Hungary for London before relocating to New York, where he established a hedge fund and amassed enormous wealth.
He rose to fame in the UK after successfully wagering $1 billion that the value of the pound would decline in 1992.
He founded the Open Society Foundations (OSF) to aid the process when the Berlin wall fell, opening the way for the installation of democratic governments in the former Soviet bloc. The OSF presently supports liberal causes, educational institutions, and human rights in more than 120 nations with an annual budget of around $1.5 billion.
The right wing has taken issue with some of its causes, such as addressing racial prejudice in the US court system.
In 2018, the OSF relocated its worldwide operations office from Budapest to Berlin in response to a public campaign against both Mr. Soros personally and the activity of the organization by the Hungarian government under Viktor Orban.
Hip-hop enthusiast and supporter of the American football team the New York Jets, Alex Soros is well-known for his “high-flying” social life and attendance at high-profile events in Cannes and the Hamptons. He also joined the board of the human rights advocacy organization Global Witness and has been to far-flung regions of the Amazon.
He told the newspaper, “Our side has to do better in being more patriotic and inclusive. The mere fact that someone supported Trump does not imply that they are ignorant or bigoted.
