THE former wife Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has given away more than $4bn to food banks and emergency Covid relief funds in just four months.
Super rich MacKenzie Scott said she wanted to help those Americans who were struggling during the ongoing pandemic.
In a blog post, she revealed she has given $4.2 billion to groups helping the vulnerable as the pandemic hits lives like “a wrecking ball.”
Scott, who formerly went by the name MacKenzie Bezos, last year signed a “giving pledge” to donate the bulk of her wealth to charity.
And earlier this year, she gave nearly $1.7 billion to groups devoted to race, gender and economic equality, as well as other social causes.
“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” Scott said in a post detailing her second round of giving this year.
“Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty.”
She added some donations will also be directed toward “long-term systemic inequities” like debt relief, employment training and legal defense funds.
Meanwhile, she noted, the wealth of billionaires has substantially increased during the global crisis.
Such billionaires include her ex-husband, although Scott did not mention his name.
The bank balance of Bezos – the world’s richest man – has reportedly grown almost 80 per cent during the coronavirus crisis
Scott said she enlisted a team of advisors that helped identify 384 organizations across the US that support people suffering from the economic toll of the pandemic.
Special attention was given to groups working to combat hunger, poverty and racial inequity in communities, according to Scott.
Targets for support included food banks, employment training services, legal defense funds, debt relief programs and civil rights advocacy groups.
The groups that received donations “dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and courtrooms and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day,” Scott said.
Scott was left a multi-billionaire after her divorce last year from Bezos.
She ranked 20th on a Forbes real-time list of the world’s richest people index on Tuesday, with a net worth of $56 billion – after taking her latest donations into account.
Bezos was at the top of that list with a net worth of $185 billion.
“I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” the 49-year-old wrote in her initial pledge to give away at least half of her massive fortune.
Charity experts have applauded the amount she has given away and how she has done it.
Bezos and Scott first met in 1993 when she was interviewed for her position at hedge fund D.E. Shaw by her husband-to-be.
She got the job and the two became an item shortly after meeting.
Scott once told Vogue: “My office was next door to his, and all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh. How could you not fall in love with that laugh?”
Bezos described his other half as “resourceful, smart, brainy, and hot”.
He told his wife about his business idea and the following year, in 1994, they quit their jobs and travelled to Seattle to found Amazon.
After 25 years of marriage as well as a trial separation the couple decided to split amicably in January 2019.
On April 4, the pair settled their divorce, with Mackenzie retaining a $36billion stake in Amazon.
At the end of November, Amazon said it would give $500m in one-time bonuses to its US frontline employees who are working the holiday season during the coronavirus pandemic.
Full-time operations staff around the country who are employed Amazon from December 1 to 31 will receive a $300 bonus.
