George Soros is giving over $1 million to the City of Milan to help it end and recover from its devastating coronavirus outbreak, the former hedge fund manager announced in a statement emailed to Business Insider on Tuesday.
The donation came the day after Soros announced that he would give a separate €1 million (over $1 million) gift to help his native Budapest provide for its elderly and homeless populations through his non-profit, Open Society Foundations. Both gifts are part of Soros' larger "series of interventions" in Europe's coronavirus crisis, the 89-year-old billionaire's son Alex Soros said in the statement.
The Soros family also criticized the European Union's response to the outbreak, saying that the EU should have focused on "reaching out in the spirit of cooperation and shared sacrifice" instead of restricting travel.
In a separate statement released earlier this week, Soros said his response to the crisis was inspired by his experiences growing up in Budapest during the Holocaust. "I was born in Budapest, in the middle of the Great Depression, barely a decade after the Spanish Flu left thousands of dead in Budapest," Soros said in a statement on Monday. "I lived through World War II, the Arrow Cross rule, and the siege in the city. I remember what it is like to live in extreme circumstances."
Italy is one of the countries hardest hit but the novel coronavirus that has infected over 887,000 and killed more than 44,000 since being identified in Wuhan, China in December. Only the United States has reported more cases than Italy.
Soros has frequently been the target of fierce criticism and unsubstantiated, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories because of his philanthropy. He's been accused of aiding Nazis, conspiring to fill Budapest with refugees, and trying to start a Civil War in the United States, Business Insider previously reported.
After leaving Budapest as a teenager, Soros built a $6.7 billion fortune running what was once the world's largest hedge fund, Business Insider reported.
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