The international consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has spent years training Hamas-friendly Qatar’s government workers, including after Oct. 7. It agreed to endorse Chinese Communist Party principles in 2023 in order to secure a six-figure contract advising city officials in Beijing on artificial intelligence. Now, it’s apologizing—after "exiting" two partners who worked for an aid project in Gaza backed by the U.S. and Israeli governments.
BCG announced last week that it had fired two of its managing directors who were consulting for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new American and Israeli-backed aid distribution program formed to prevent Hamas from intercepting international humanitarian supplies. CEO Christoph Schweizer wrote in a company-wide email that he was "sorry for how disappointing this has been to many BCGers around the world."
He also sent a message to BCG alumni, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, that said the "humanitarian crisis and aid efforts in Gaza" have "come under scrutiny, raising serious questions about our role and how the work was approved." That work violated "BCG's direction, policies, and values—including our apolitical and humanitarian-focused stance in this conflict," Schweizer wrote, indicating that the firm was institutionally opposed to aiding the joint U.S.-Israeli initiative.
The messages came as news of BCG's involvement in the project infuriated a group of the firm's employees, who wrote a letter to leadership saying BCG would be complicit in "population transfer and ethnic cleansing." They demanded the firm "hold to account all those who dragged BCG into this unenviable situation" and "immediately issue an explanatory note to staff to address their concerns."
BCG has offered no such condemnations—and does not appear to have faced internal pushback—over its lucrative work in Qatar and China.
In 2022, BCG inked an agreement with the Qatari government to help train public workers, a deal that came as the Gulf state prepared to host a World Cup that exposed its human rights record. Hundreds of migrant workers, many of whom faced forced labor conditions, died while working on construction projects related to the tournament.
Months later, BCG launched a major expansion of its business in Qatar with the stated goal of becoming the terror-tied state's "premier management consulting firm." Its clients include "leading public sector entities" in Qatar, according to the firm's website. Earlier this year, the Qatar Investment Authority announced it would fund B Capital, a BCG-backed venture capital firm.
BCG’s work with Qatar continued even as the government gave Hamas leaders asylum in luxury hotels and homes after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Qatar is one of Hamas’s biggest financial backers and has worked closely with the terrorist organization on political and strategic goals. The firm's work also continued as Schweizer touted BCG's "LGBTQ+ inclusion" efforts. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar.
The firm has worked on sensitive projects with the Chinese government as well.
In 2023, Beijing city officials hired BCG as a consultant on an artificial intelligence hub and asked the firm "to endorse the principles of the Communist Party in order to take on the assignment," the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. The firm defended its work in that case, telling the Journal it "has robust risk and compliance systems to ensure our work meets the laws of all countries in which we operate" and agreed to endorse the CCP principles to comply with Chinese law. The party's "Four Cardinal Principles" include an adherence to CCP leadership and to Marxism.
BCG spokeswoman Nidhi Sinha pointed the Free Beacon to a statement on the company's website which states that the firm stopped work with the GHF not out of opposition to the aid initiative but because the two partners who worked on it, Matt Schlueter and Ryan Ordway, "failed to disclose the full nature of the work." A source close to GHF questioned that rationale.
"It’s pretty clear BCG is hanging these partners out to dry," the source told the Free Beacon. "There's no way a contract this big went under the radar at BCG."
BCG's condemnation of its former partners' work for GHF, a joint American-Israeli project, could attract the ire of the Trump administration. BCG is a major recipient of U.S. government funding—the firm pulled in over $340 million in defense contracts in 2024 alone, a Free Beacon review found.
Sinha told the Free Beacon the firm maintains a "strong presence in Israel," having opened an office in Tel Aviv in 2011, and supports "many Israeli-based NGOs and charities." She also said the firm employs "tens of thousands of talented Americans" who are "proudly supporting America" by working on projects like revitalizing "America's ship building and maritime industrial base."
The Department of Defense declined to comment on BCG’s position on the Gaza aid program and referred media inquiries to the State Department. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The firm has said that its work with GHF was done "pro bono." The Post, however, cast doubt on that claim, reporting "that BCG had presented monthly invoices of more than $1 million." The firm could now expense those fees to its "internal accounts in lieu of billing for consultants' work," a person familiar with its operations told the outlet.
BCG has a policy known as "Global No Fly Zone," which prohibits "work with clients engaged in illegal, unethical, or improper activity who have made no effort to remedy it," according to the employee letter. The letter argues that the firm's work in Israel "appears to violate" that policy but makes no mention of China or Qatar.
BCG has gotten into hot water over its work for foreign governments in the past. In 2024, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.) pressed the company’s global chair Rich Lesser on whether he would "refuse to respond" to a U.S. congressional subpoena if it was blocked by a Chinese court. Lesser declined to answer. That same year, U.S. lawmakers subpoenaed records of BCG's work for Saudi Arabia but the firm refused to provide them, arguing that doing so could lead to jail time for their employees in Riyadh.