Bill Gates amid embarrassing private life revelations
Will we one day speak of "Gates gate"? In a few hours, three American media have made grim revelations about the founder of Microsoft, who recently announced his divorce.
Like an impression of coordinated shooting. Bill Gates, founder of the Microsoft group, and one of the richest men on the planet, has been the subject of embarrassing revelations in three major US media since Sunday night.
In just three hours, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) claimed Gates stepped down from the computer giant's board in 2020 over an investigation into his behavior towards a employee. Then the New York Times assured that Gates, seductive without being predatory, had notably aroused the resentment of his wife Melinda by not acting against the manager of his fortune, Michael Larson, accused of sexual harassment in 2017. For his part, Daily Beast has claimed that the ties between Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein are much closer than advertised.
Flashback: Two weeks ago, Bill and Melinda Gates, one of the richest couples in the world with an estimated fortune of $ 130 billion, announced they were divorcing after 27 years of marriage. The matter seemed complete and their immense fortunes already shared, in particular thanks to colossal donations to their Foundation - which they continue to co-chair -, and a transfer of shares from Bill to Melinda, to the tune of almost $ 2 billion.
Relationship "deemed inappropriate"
The WSJ had already said last week that Melinda Gates, who now calls herself Melinda French Gates, deeming her marriage "irretrievably broken", had been working on this separation with lawyers since 2019. When in 2019? According to new revelations from the business newspaper, in the second half of 2019, as the shock wave of the #MeToo phenomenon continues, an engineer at the company sent a letter in which she explained that she had an extramarital affair with Bill Gates in the early 2000s and for quite a long time. She absolutely wanted her former lover's wife to read his letter. To find out what? At the end of 2019, the board launched an independent investigation, with the help of independent lawyers, into this relationship "deemed inappropriate". “During the investigation, some members of the board decided that it was no longer appropriate for Mr. Gates to serve as a director of the software company he had created and led for decades. Writes the WSJ.
Gates stepped down from his board seat on March 13, 2020, three months after being re-elected. He would have done so before the conclusion of the investigation but especially before a plenary meeting of the board of directors was held, during which it would have been impossible to keep the matter secret.
"There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably", defended Bridgitt Arnold, spokesperson for Mr. Gates on Sunday, acknowledging for the first time an extramarital relationship to his boss . "His decision to step down from the board was in no way related to this issue," she said. He left Microsoft to be able to invest full time in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she said, as was then specified.
Known for his clumsy approaches to women
In an article titled "Long Before the Divorce, Bill Gates Was Known for His Questionable Behavior," The New York Times reported that "on a few occasions Mr. Gates sued women who worked for him at Microsoft and at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to people with direct knowledge of these cases ”.
When Bill and Melinda Gates met in 1987, she was a product manager at Microsoft, he was the boss. While they recounted the very romantic beginnings of their romance, they never said exactly when they started dating. "When we first met, she had other boyfriends, and I had Microsoft," he said in a 2019 Netflix docuseries called "Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates." The couple married in 1994. "Long after their marriage in 1994, Mr. Gates occasionally pursued women in the office," writes The New York Times. And to tell how, in 2006, after an introductory meeting of an employee, Gates, then president of Microsoft, had "sent an email to the woman to invite her to dinner, according to two people close to the exchange. ". "If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend this exchange never happened," he also reportedly wrote.
“Mr. Gates was known for his clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office,” writes the daily, which says that while the gossip around his behavior was frequent, he was not viewed as a predator. “Some employees said […] that he had not pressured women into submitting to his advances for the sake of their careers, and they seemed to feel he was giving women l 'space to refuse his advances'.
The shadow of Jeffrey Epstein
"The rumors and speculation surrounding Gates' divorce are becoming more and more absurd, and it is unfortunate that people who have little or no knowledge of the situation are being labeled 'sources'," Bridgitt Arnold annoyed. from the New York Times. She has also denied other claims by the newspaper, which appear to corroborate the third article, that of the Daily Beast: Gates and Epstein ties much closer than previously acknowledged.
It had been known for some time that the two had known each other, but the US news site revealed that the philanthropist had shared "dozens" of dates with Jeffrey Epstein at his iconoclastic Manhattan home. The pedophile millionaire who committed suicide in August 2019 in prison, a month after his arrest, is said to have given Gates, during numerous interviews at his Manhattan home, advice on coming out of his "toxic marriage" to Melinda. While Gates would have proposed to Epstein to get involved in his foundation to restore his image, tarnished after his conviction for having solicited for money the sexual favors of a minor, a deal negotiated with the courts to hide his predatory behavior, and whose scent of scandal had forced a minister of Donald Trump to resign.
