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Christoph Schweizer, the CEO of Boston Consulting Group, said his company had fired two partners involved in the Israeli-American effort and launched a “formal investigation” to ensure “this does not happen again.”
The chief executive of one of the world’s top consulting firms apologized to staff and admitted “process failures” in the company’s decision to help design and run a controversial Israeli-backed group that supplanted the work of the United Nations to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
Christoph Schweizer, the CEO of Boston Consulting Group, said his company had fired two partners involved in the Israeli-American effort and launched a “formal investigation” to ensure “this does not happen again.”
“I deeply regret that in this situation, we fell short – of our own standards and of the trust that you, our clients and our broader communities place in BCG,” he wrote. “I am sorry for how deeply disappointing this has been to many BCGers around the world.”
The apology letter is the latest fallout from the decision by Israel and the United States to bypass the U.N. and channel the delivery of essential aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an opaque entity that has limited aid delivery to a few distribution hubs overseen by U.S. private security contractors in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces.
The GHF came under immediate criticism from the U.N. and aid groups, who expressed concerns about the independence of the program. Hours before the group began operations, the foundation’s executive director, Jake Wood, resigned, saying that its plans were inconsistent with “humanitarian principles.”
The rollout of the program has seen crowds of Palestinians come under gunfire while trying to collect food from Israeli-backed distribution hubs. Nearly 50 Palestinians have reportedly been killed and 300 others wounded near the distribution center that Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Palestinian relief agency, has called a “death trap.”
The Israeli government has dismissed criticisms and hailed the project as a success, saying the foundation’s aid centers have processed 8.5 million meals and will expand operations in the coming weeks. “Our friends in the Trump administration have joined forces with us to facilitate an aid mechanism that bypasses Hamas and ensures that only Gazan civilians receive it,” said Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to Washington.
A spokesperson for the GHF said that aid distribution was halted at one site Friday, citing safety concerns due to “excessive crowding,” but emphasized that the foundation was adapting to conditions on the ground to account for variables such as road access, crowd pressure and other safety considerations.
Most humanitarian groups backed out of the project because of their concerns about Israeli oversight and the militarization of aid. Others have rejected the new system based on practical assessments that the GHF cannot operate at the scale required to address Gaza’s hunger crisis, where more than 2 million people are at risk of starvation after Israel barred the entry of food, water and humanitarian aid for nearly three months.
“Humanitarians know what happens when you militarize aid distribution in a war zone,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. “You end up with huge risks to civilians, and you don’t get aid safely to those who most need it. That’s exactly what we’re seeing.”
BCG consultants played a critical role in designing and maintaining the business operations of the new humanitarian foundation and regularly met with Israeli officials, according to three people familiar with the GHF, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
“It’s the operational and analytical rigor behind the foundation,” said one person close to its operations. “They mapped the value chain and pinpointed costs. Without BCG, you don’t have the full picture.”
A BCGspokesperson confirmed that two senior partners had been terminated for overseeing “unauthorized work” related to the foundation Thursday. The lead partner, Matt Schlueter, was a managing director and senior partner in BCG’s defense and security practice and spent nearly a decade as the president of the firm’s subsidiary consulting practice with the U.S. government. The second partner, Ryan Ordway, also worked in BCG’s public sector defense and security practice. A BCG spokesperson declined to comment on how staff were selected to work on providing humanitarian support to Gaza.
In his letter to BCG employees, Schweizer said the fired partners “did not disclose the full nature of the work and led us to believe the effort had broad multi-lateral support from several countries and NGOs.”
People familiar with the GHF’s operations said that early architects of the program envisioned securing political and financial backing from key multilateral allies, including wealthy Arab nations, the U.S. and European donor states. Although a GHF spokesman said the foundation had received $100 million from an undisclosed donor, no governments have publicly committed funds to the embattled foundation.
On Wednesday, Israeli media outlet Kan News reported that the Israeli government had transferred “hundreds of millions of shekels” to fund the new foundation responsible for distributing aid in Gaza. The Israeli prime minister’s office told The Post the report was “fake news.”
Internal documents obtained by The Post spanning more than six months indicate that BCG played a key role in designing the operations and business strategy of the foundation, as well as the pricing and procurement plans underpinning the network of private security contractors and construction companies that enable the GHF’s aid distribution. Schlueter’s U.S.-based team had been dispatched to Tel Aviv to support the GHF launch since mid March.
A BCG spokesperson stated that the firm’s initial support, dating back to October, was provided “pro bono” but that subsequent work was conducted without full disclosure.
“We are shocked and outraged at the work these two partners conducted,” the company said in a statement to The Post. “Their actions were unauthorized and represented a serious failure in both judgment and adherence to our standards. We have exited the two partners from the firm and unequivocally disavow their actions.”
News of BCG’s involvement in the project infuriated a group of the firm’s employees who wrote a letter to leadership this week saying that participation in the GHF’s aid distribution model could make the company “potentially complicit in a system that enables population transfer and ethnic cleansing.”
A set of leaked November planning documents linked to the GHF details a long-term vision for aid distribution in Gaza, where civilians are relocated into “humanitarian transition areas” [HTA] or heavily surveilled compounds and issued identification cards to secure temporary housing or access to aid.
In response to previous Post reporting, which detailed early fears that the residential compounds might be compared to “‘concentration camps’ with biometrics,” a spokesperson for the GHF denied allegations that Gazans would be vetted to access aid and dismissed the planning documents as inaccurate and out of date.
However, an April 14 presentation prepared by BCG consultants includes references to newly revised pricing models for an “HTA 1+” and a “Hasty HTA” – acronyms used to describe the residential aid compounds in the November documents. These projections provide previously unreported indications that the group of entities supporting the GHF remained interested in building out a residential model for aid distribution as recently as one month before the new aid system launched.
A spokesperson for BCG declined to comment on the firm’s involvement in any plans linked to the forcible relocation of Palestinian civilians, which could amount to war crimes.
The firm has stated that it will not get paid for any of the work conducted on behalf of the foundation – which could amount to millions of dollars expensed to the firm’s internal accounts in lieu of billing for consultants’ work, according to a person familiar with BCG’s operations.
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