Boris Nikolic has not been charged with any offence, and no released document alleges he participated in or knew of Epstein’s crimes. He publicly refused the executor role he was named to without his knowledge. Roughly 3.3 million pages remain unpublished. This page sets out what the record shows about a man who appears at more hinge points in the Gates–Epstein relationship than anyone else, and states plainly where it stops.
Three facts establish the significance.
One. Reporting indicates Nikolic facilitated the first meeting between Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein, at the Manhattan townhouse, having himself been introduced to Epstein by Melanie Walker.
Two. When Gates stopped engaging directly around 2016, Nikolic became the channel. The “put her through computer school” message — the clearest documented instance of Epstein applying leverage over Gates — was sent to Nikolic, for onward transmission.
Three. Epstein named him successor executor in a will signed two days before his death, disposing of roughly $578 million.
What none of that establishes. That Nikolic did anything wrong. He says he was never consulted about the will and refused the role. His spokeswoman says Epstein was not an investor in his ventures and that the two had no business ties.
Being an intermediary is not a crime, and being named in someone’s will requires nothing of you.
What it does establish is that Epstein, choosing among everyone he knew, selected a working scientist with Gates Foundation standing — and did so at the moment he had least left to lose.
Introducer — facilitated the first Gates–Epstein meeting.
Channel — relayed Epstein’s messages after Gates withdrew.
Target — reportedly took financial advice from Epstein before a biotech IPO.
Gatekeeper — the route a pharmaceutical officer sought to reach Gates Foundation grant-making in Africa.
Executor-in-waiting — named to control $578 million, without being asked.
Section 01
Who He Is
A Croatian-American physician and immunologist, born around 1970. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb, then completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, where he also served as an assistant professor.
The Gates role. He became chief adviser for science and technology to Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — a position spanning the foundation’s global health portfolio and Gates’s private office. His correspondence signature identifies him with bgC3, Gates’s personal think-tank and office entity.
The academic record, precisely. He joined the Harvard Graduate Program in Immunology in 1994, progressing from postdoctoral fellow to Instructor in Surgery and Medicine to Assistant Professor of Medicine, 2002–2010. From 2002 to 2007 he led an immunology laboratory for tolerance induction and stem cell transplantation in the Renal Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has authored more than 70 articles, patents and patent applications, and co-founded three biotechnology companies.
The Gates years. He joined the Gates Foundation in 2007, and bgC3 — Gates’s private office — by 2010, serving as Chief Advisor for Science and Technology to Bill Gates until April 2014.
The venture role. He founded Aquatrove Biosciences in 2005 and the investment vehicle bng0 LLC in February 2015, then co-founded Biomatics Capital Partners in Seattle, where he is co-founder and managing director. Biomatics closed a $300 million second fund in 2018. His board seats are set out in Section 02.
The overlap with Epstein’s world. Both men were clients of the JPMorgan private bank — the same institution where, per Bloomberg’s sources, Epstein helped bankers attract lucrative clients. The bank’s own file →
The Harvard overlap. Nikolic trained and taught at the institution that received $9.1 million from Epstein, and where Epstein kept a keyed office for a decade after the conviction. No document connects Nikolic to that arrangement.
The scientific standing is real. He is a credentialed immunologist with a genuine research and investment career, which is precisely what made him useful — and precisely why his appearance in this record is worth documenting rather than assuming.
The person who introduced Nikolic to Epstein.
A neurosurgeon and Gates Foundation figure who had herself previously worked for Epstein — and who appears in this archive in the Africa health thread.
The chain runs: Epstein → Walker → Nikolic → Gates. Three of those four links sit inside global health philanthropy.
Medical & Health in Africa →
Section 02
The Board Seats
Nikolic’s directorships are a matter of public corporate record, and they are heavily concentrated in one field. Of the companies below, four are gene-editing or genome-engineering ventures, and three more are sequencing and omics platforms. Two were co-founded by George Church — the Harvard geneticist documented elsewhere in this archive as an Epstein funding recipient who attributed his failure to refuse the money to “nerd tunnel vision.”
Biomatics led the $120 million Series B in 2015 — at the time the largest investment into a CRISPR startup. Editas was co-founded by George Church. Nikolic joined the board in August 2015; the IPO followed in February 2016 — the period in which a Bloomberg source says he took financial advice from Epstein.
Engineering pig organs for human transplant, using CRISPR to edit porcine genomes. Also co-founded by George Church.
Launched May 2019 with $58.5m Series A. Strategic advisers included J. Keith Joung, co-founder of Editas and Beam Therapeutics.
A Biomatics portfolio company developing sequencing-by-binding chemistry.
Single-molecule protein sequencing.
High-throughput single-cell analysis.
Molecular simulation software for drug discovery.
Real-world medical data from clinical registries.
Data access control software. Acquired by Microsoft, 2019.
Ophthalmic data and patient monitoring.
The Editas sequence is the one worth setting out precisely.
2015 — Biomatics leads a $120 million Series B into Editas, then the largest investment into a CRISPR company. Biomatics’ own account says Nikolic “identified CRISPR as a very powerful game changing technology, after learning of the company through his academic and venture network.”
August 2015 — Nikolic joins the Editas board as an independent director.
February 2016 — Editas goes public.
Around that IPO, per an unnamed source cited by Bloomberg, Nikolic received financial advice from Epstein.
His spokeswoman states Epstein was not an investor in any of his ventures and that the two had no business ties. Nothing establishes that Epstein held a position in Editas, influenced the Series B, or benefited from the IPO.
Why it is recorded. Because it is the only point in the public record where Epstein and Nikolic’s commercial activity is reported to intersect — everywhere else the relationship is social or intermediary. And because the company at the centre of it works on the technology Epstein was most preoccupied with.
The wider portfolio. Biomatics closed a $300 million second fund in 2018, and backed Twist Bioscience (synthetic DNA, $61m round) and Grail (cancer diagnostics) early.
Gene editing / genome engineering — Editas, eGenesis, Verve.
Synthetic DNA — Twist Bioscience.
Sequencing & omics — Omniome, Encodia, Scale Biosciences.
Diagnostics — Grail.
Epstein’s documented personal interests were genetics, eugenics and the engineering of human beings. Nikolic’s professional portfolio sits in exactly that technical territory.
This is an adjacency, not a link. Nikolic is a transplantation immunologist by training; gene editing is where life-sciences venture capital went after 2012, and hundreds of investors made the same bet. No document connects Epstein to any of these companies.
What he was interested in →
Section 03
The Record
Melanie Walker — a neurosurgeon and Gates Foundation figure who had herself worked for Epstein — introduces Nikolic to him. Reporting indicates Nikolic then facilitated the first meeting between Bill Gates and Epstein at the Manhattan townhouse.
House Oversight emails show Nikolic coordinating a multi-day itinerary with Epstein around the amfAR Gala and Life Ball, hosted by the Dichand family, the Austrian media dynasty. The weekend ends with Nikolic taking the “first flight Sunday morning for San Francisco to meet Bill.”
Nikolic is photographed with Bill Gates at Together To End AIDS, a benefit for amfAR and GBCHealth at the Kennedy Center.
Correspondence across the period covers Davos social events, introductions to Prince Andrew, and European travel. His email signature identifies him with bgC3 — Gates’s private office.
Nikolic co-founds the Seattle life-sciences venture firm, becoming managing director and sitting on several portfolio boards. His spokeswoman says Epstein was not an investor in any of his ventures.
An unnamed source tells Bloomberg that Nikolic received financial advice from Epstein in the run-up to the IPO of Editas Medicine — the CRISPR gene-editing company co-founded by George Church, himself a documented recipient of Epstein funding at Harvard.
Gates has stopped engaging directly. Epstein writes to Nikolic for onward transmission: “you can tell your boy that i still hear from mila. i put her through computer school.”
Epstein introduces urologist Harry Fisch to Nikolic. Fisch wanted an introduction to the Gates Foundation, for grants to distribute female condoms across Africa against a three-million-unit shortfall in Uganda. No document establishes what followed.
EFTA02632987. Nikolic is still in active, friendly correspondence with Epstein: “Please let me know when you know.”
Epstein signs a will disposing of roughly $578 million, naming Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn executors — and Boris Nikolic successor executor should they be unable or unwilling to serve. Two days later Epstein is dead.
On learning of it from Bloomberg, Nikolic states: “I was not consulted in these matters and I have no intent to fulfill these duties, whatsoever.” He never serves.
The DOJ release places Nikolic across the correspondence record. Croatian media report on the role of the Zagreb-trained physician who advised the Gates Foundation.
Section 04
The Function He Served
This site documents the intermediary role repeatedly, and Nikolic is its purest example.
What an intermediary provides. Not money and not decisions — arrival under someone else’s name. A proposal carried by a trusted figure lands as that figure’s proposal.
Why Nikolic was ideal for it. He was a credentialed scientist, employed at the top of the world’s largest health foundation, with a venture fund of his own and no public association with Epstein. Nothing about an email from Boris Nikolic looked like an email from Jeffrey Epstein.
The 2016 relay is the clearest instance. By then Gates had reportedly stopped responding. Epstein’s message about Mila Antonova — “tell your boy… i put her through computer school” — could not be sent to Gates directly. It was sent to Nikolic, and its entire force depended on Nikolic passing it on.
The 2018 instance is the most consequential. A pharmaceutical officer wanting Gates Foundation money for African distribution did not approach the foundation. He was routed to Nikolic, by Epstein.
What is not established. Whether Nikolic relayed the 2016 message, whether he passed on the 2018 introduction, or what he understood about either. He has not addressed them publicly, and the released files do not answer it.
The structural point. Every institutional failure in this archive turns on the same absence: no rule anywhere governs who makes an introduction. Donor policies cover money. Nothing covers access.
Cambridge — Joi Ito, for MIT.
New York — John Brockman, for the scientific establishment.
Abidjan — Nina Keita, for a president.
Kyiv — the mother agency.
Seattle — Boris Nikolic, for Bill Gates.
In each case the intermediary was legitimate, trusted, and carried something they did not originate.
One Method →
Section 05
The Will
On 8 August 2019, two days before his death, Epstein signed a will disposing of approximately $578 million.
The structure. Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn — his longtime attorney and accountant — as executors. All personal property to the trustees of an entity called The 1953 Trust, named for his birth year.
And a successor executor: Boris Nikolic, to take control should Indyke and Kahn be unable or unwilling to serve.
His response, on being told by Bloomberg:
“I was not consulted in these matters and I have no intent to fulfill these duties, whatsoever.”
He described himself as “shocked.” He never served.
Why the naming is worth examining even so. Epstein was meticulous. A will signed 48 hours before death is not a casual document, and the successor executor is the person who takes over if the primary pair fail.
He chose, from everyone he knew, a Gates Foundation scientist.
Two readings are available and the files do not settle between them. That Nikolic was simply the most competent non-lawyer he trusted. Or that naming a respected scientist attached institutional credibility to an estate that was about to be litigated for years.
Nothing establishes that Nikolic knew, agreed, or benefited. The record shows he was named, and that he refused.
Section 06
Open Questions
Boris Nikolic appears at the beginning of the Gates–Epstein relationship, at the point it narrowed to a single channel, at its last documented use, and in the will signed two days before Epstein died.
He has not been charged, is not alleged to have known of or participated in any crime, and refused the role he was named to. Those facts are as much a part of this record as the rest.
What has never happened is any public account — from Nikolic, from the Gates Foundation, or from Gates’s private office — of what the adviser to the world’s largest health philanthropy was doing in that correspondence for nine years. This file is open.
Section 07
Sources
Epstein’s 11th-Hour Executor
Aug 2019. The original report — the will, the naming, and Nikolic’s statement that he was never consulted.
bloomberg.com →Who Is Boris Nikolic?
The Zagreb and Harvard Medical School background, the Biomatics role, the JPMorgan private bank overlap, and the Editas advice.
foxbusiness.com →The $577 Million Will
The 1953 Trust, the Indyke and Kahn executorships, and the probate outlook.
thedailybeast.com →EFTA02632987
March 2019 — Nikolic in active correspondence with Epstein four months before the arrest.
justice.gov/epstein ↗The Croatian Physician in the Files
Jan 2026. Coverage of the Zagreb-trained doctor who advised the Gates Foundation.
serbiantimes.info →The Portfolio
The firm’s own account of the Editas investment — Nikolic identifying CRISPR, and the $120m Series B.
biomaticscapital.com →Directorships
Editas (2015–2018), Schrödinger, BlueTalon, Verana Health, eGenesis, Omniome, Encodia and Scale Biosciences.
marketscreener.com →The Money Network
$158m in fees, $1–$2bn in tax value, Apollo stock from the 2011 IPO, and $14m of philanthropy redirected.
Read the report →Bill Gates
The meetings, the Antonova leverage, and the congressional testimony.
Read the profile →The Gates Foundation
The programme record set against the relationship, in three tracks.
Read the report →Medical & Health in Africa
Melanie Walker, the Fisch introduction and the Uganda shortfall.
Read the report →