Source: Children’s Health Defense

The World Economic Forum (WEF) opened an investigation into founder Klaus Schwab after a whistleblower alleged financial and ethical misconduct, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday.

The news broke soon after the organization announced Monday that Schwab was stepping down as chairman “with immediate effect” from the organization he founded in 1971 and led for more than half a century.

The WSJ reported that a whistleblower letter sent by current and former staff last week to the WEF board alleged that Schwab and his wife, Hilde Schwab, “mixed their personal affairs with the Forum’s resources.”

The whistleblower also alleged that the Schwabs funded luxury travel and services at the WEF’s expense, misused WEF property, and that Klaus Schwab asked junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf.

Schwab denied the allegations and said he would challenge them in a lawsuit, unnamed sources within the WEF told the WSJ. He said through a spokesperson that he will also file lawsuits against “anybody who spreads these mistruths.”

The board opened its investigation during an emergency meeting on Sunday. The 87-year-old Schwab decided to resign immediately rather than stay for an extended transition period as originally planned, the WSJ reported.

Whistleblower allegations ‘blew up’ Schwab’s retirement timeline

Schwab first announced he was stepping down as the WEF’s executive chairman last year, but remained nonexecutive chair.

Last month, following a different investigation by the board into Davos’ workplace culture, Schwab announced he would also step down as nonexecutive chair, although the process to replace him was set to go through 2027.

The workplace culture investigation was prompted by a WSJ report that revealed allegations by employees of discrimination against women and Black employees at the Geneva-based WEF. Schwab and the WEF refuted those allegations.

The new whistleblower allegations “blew up” Schwab’s original retirement timeline by prompting the new investigation, the WSJ reported.

A WEF spokesperson said Wednesday in a statement, also reported by Politico, that the organization’s board of trustees had “unanimously supported the Audit and Risk Committee’s decision to initiate an independent investigation following a whistleblower letter containing allegations against former Chairman Klaus Schwab.”

They added: “This decision was made after consultation with external legal counsel and in line with the Forum’s fiduciary responsibilities. The investigation will be led by the Audit and Risk Committee with the support of independent legal experts.”

The organization said the charges have not yet been proven, and the board will withhold further comment until it knows the outcome of the investigation.

The WEF’s Board of Trustees includes BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Jordan’s Queen Rania Al Abdullah and European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde as members.

The WEF announced Monday that Vice Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, former CEO of Nestlé, will serve as interim chairman, and that it had established a search committee to find a future chair.

Brabeck-Letmathe is perhaps most well-known for declaring that water is not a human right, but a market commodity, when he led Nestlé, one of the global leaders in the privatization of water. He has also long been an aggressive promoter of GMOs.

‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy’

Since its founding in 1971, the WEF, namely through its annual meeting at the elite resort town of Davos, Switzerland, has been a site for the global elite to gather, network and lay out their vision for the future, which critics have long observed is rooted in hierarchy, exploitation and political polarization.

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda,” said the WEF was originally founded as the European Management Forum. However, after two years, Schwab cut ties with the European Commission and decided to invite only select politicians to its events.

By 1974, he said, Schwab had shifted the emphasis from corporate management to “global governance.”

Rectenwald added:

“The WEF positioned itself as filling gaps between national, international and transnational governance organizations, which it has deemed incapable of effective global governance, due to exclusive membership of state actors. The WEF aims to overcome what it considers to be the inertia of such international intergovernmental governance bodies as the United Nations by networking business, governmental and civil society leaders.

“Since focusing on ‘global governance,’ the WEF has sought to pontificate on supposed global crises that could only be treated on a global scale with global governance. Thus, it has focused on ‘climate change,’ the Fourth Industrial Revolution and, most recently, the COVID crisis.”

The organization drew international ire during the COVID-19 pandemic, when one of its videos portending a dystopian future where “you will own nothing, and you will be happy” circulated widely.

Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum chairman and board member, announced his resignation on Monday.

Schwab founded WEF almost 55 years ago, a globalist organization that preached, “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

Good riddance to Schwab. He and WEF are both pure evil. pic.twitter.com/0xfmI0o9Ok

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) April 21, 2025

‘One of the most arrogant globalists ever to live’

The WEF advocates technocratic governance and the use of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, a so-called “digital revolution” to integrate biology with the digital realm, through a political transformation that Schwab famously called “The Great Reset,” which he predicted would emerge through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many WEF critics on X celebrated Schwab’s Monday announcement that he was stepping down. However, when he first floated the idea last year, experts who spoke with The Defender cautioned that a change in WEF leadership would not likely bring much change to the WEF’s policy agenda.

Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, said that even with a change of chairmanship, “The WEF will continue to push for the total technocratic takeover of society through the merger of corporation and state, the fusion of humans and machines, and the Orwellian use of technologies emerging from the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution that blurs our physical, biological and digital identities.”

Rectenwald added, “Schwab is nothing if not a megalomaniac. But his resignation will not change the focus of the WEF, which will continue to presume that it should play a leading role in shaping the responses to ‘global crises.’”

In his 2022 address to the annual meeting, Rectenwald noted, Schwab warned that something worse than COVID-19 may be on the horizon.

Schwab told WEF members, “We have to reinforce our resilience against a new virus, possibly, or other risks which we have on the global agenda.” He later declared, “The future is not just happening. The future is built by us, by a powerful community, as you here in this room.”

Rectenwald said such remarks illustrate Schwab’s hubris. “He saw himself as deciding the future for all of humanity. Thus, he will go down in history as one of the most arrogant globalists ever to live.”

Related articles in The Defender 

• Klaus Schwab to Vacate Top Post, as WEF Looks to Become Global Leader in Public-Private ‘Cooperation’
• Is Klaus Schwab the ‘Most Dangerous Man in the World?’
• The Globalists Have a Plan for Our Future: Total Control of the Masses
• Watch: Globalists Know They’re ‘Extremely Unpopular’ — But That Won’t Keep Them From Seeking ‘Total Control’ Over Global Population