By A philanthropic foundation backed by British hedge fund magnate Christopher Hohn has poured hundreds of millions into leftwing American advocacy groups, fueling diversity campaigns and aggressive climate policies, while drawing scrutiny for links to Chinese government entities.
The National Review writes that Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which publicly frames itself as committed to child welfare, HIV prevention, and global warming, has directed more than $553 million to nearly 40 U.S. organizations between 2014 and 2023, according to Americans for Public Trust (APT). The oversight group flagged the flow of foreign money into domestic ideological efforts as a growing blind spot in U.S. law.
“Because there is little oversight and few restrictions on foreign giving to U.S.-based organizations, Hohn’s actions via CIFF are extremely questionable and murky,” the report stated. “More investigations both on the state and federal levels are needed to determine to what extent any foreign giving laws and regulations may have been violated by Hohn and CIFF.”
U.S. law bars foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns or directly influencing elections. But watchdogs say CIFF’s grants—funneled into networks like Arabella Advisors, the liberal hub known for concealing donor identities—illustrate how overseas billionaires can skirt disclosure under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hohn’s name is now increasingly invoked alongside figures like George Soros and Swiss philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, who have bankrolled similar causes.
Hohn’s personal story—born in Surrey to a Jamaican auto mechanic father, educated at Southampton and Harvard Business School, knighted in 2014—adds to his global profile. He launched The Children’s Investment Fund hedge fund in 2003, co-founding CIFF a year earlier with then-wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn. Although their personal and professional ties split in 2012, Hohn remains CIFF’s board chair and largest donor, giving $328 million in 2024 alone. Forbes estimates his fortune at $9.2 billion, with TCI managing $60 billion in assets.
He has openly aligned with climate activism, including funding Extinction Rebellion. “I am a personal funder of Extinction Rebellion. I recently gave them £50,000 because humanity is aggressively destroying the world with climate change and there is an urgent need for us all to wake up to this fact,” he told the Telegraph in 2019.
Yet his hedge fund has long invested in industries tied to fossil fuels and aviation. TCI has held major stakes in Airbus, Coal India Ltd., and even Heathrow-linked operations.
But the foundation’s China connections have drawn the sharpest criticism. CIFF’s CEO, Kate Hampton, spoke at a 2019 forum of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Green Development Coalition, hailing the Belt and Road Initiative’s “transition from brown to green” as “essential.” She now sits on the CCP-backed China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development and was awarded Beijing’s “Friendship Award” in 2024.
APT’s report said CIFF has funneled money to CCP-aligned institutions such as the National Renewable Energy Center, the Foreign Environmental Cooperation Centre, and Tsinghua University. “CIFF is also a member of the donor steering committee for the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), which works in China to promote climate action,” the report added.Hohn isn’t the only foreign billionaire supporting leftwing causes in the United States. Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who made his fortune in the medical device industry, has become one of the most influential foreign donors in American politics. RealClearPolitics documented how Wyss has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into progressive organizations, from the Center for American Progress to the ACLU, often through complex networks designed to obscure the identity of donors. His sister even wrote that he once convened strategy sessions with these groups to explore “possibilities for exerting an influence on American jurisdiction.”
Wyss’s money has already left fingerprints on U.S. policy. His billion-dollar “Wyss Campaign for Nature” helped launch the “30 by 30” conservation agenda—protecting 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030. Within a week of taking office, President Biden signed an executive order committing the country to precisely that goal, a striking alignment between a Swiss benefactor’s priorities and the White House’s first moves. At the same time, Wyss’s political action arms helped channel over $400 million in 2020 to defeat Donald Trump and secure Democratic control of the Senate.
CIFF’s giving extends deep into America’s activist ecosystem. Beneficiaries include the Sunrise Project, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Environmental Defense Fund, World Resources Institute, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, along with Arabella’s New Venture and Windward Funds.
The larger point is unavoidable. U.S. law pretends to guard against foreign interference in elections, yet leaves wide-open channels for men like Hohn and Wyss to shape policy from the shadows. Their fortunes, earned overseas, bankroll advocacy groups that steer the national agenda on climate, energy, and regulation—without the disclosures or constraints placed on domestic donors. The result is a double standard: ordinary Americans face limits and reporting requirements, while foreign billionaires can launder ideology through tax-exempt foundations. That imbalance is not merely a legal loophole; it is a structural vulnerability in American democracy itself.
[Read More: DHS Tells Gavin Newsom Where To Shove It]
