Liaison with an employee, links with Epstein: the American press looks back on the divorce of Melinda and Bill Gates
In early May, Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce after 27 years together. Across the Atlantic, the press points to the links between the businessman and Jeffrey Epstein as one of the reasons for his wife's desire to divorce.
Why are Bill and Melinda Gates divorcing? To this delicate question, the American press is now providing some information, which reveals a background very different from the civilized tone in which the couple announced their breakup. The former Microsoft boss and his wife Melinda (French by birth name), who together 20 years ago created a foundation fighting against poverty and disease, announced their divorce on May 3, after 27 years. of marriage. However, according to the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times", a past affair of Bill Gates, as well as his relations with the late financier and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, would be linked to the desire of Melinda French Gates to ask for the divorced.
Not without impact on the company founded by Bill Gates, since his final departure from Microsoft, in March 2020, would be linked to a relationship deemed "inappropriate" with an employee of the company in the early 2000s, according to published information. Sunday May 16 by the "Wall Street Journal".
Microsoft's board members had decided that Bill Gates should step down from his board in 2020 as they investigated the billionaire's relationship with a Microsoft employee who was deemed inappropriate, ”according to the economic daily, citing sources familiar with the matter.
It was "a 20-year-old affair that ended amicably," according to a spokeswoman for Bill Gates, quoted by the "Wall Street Journal". He left Microsoft to be able to invest full time in the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation", she underl ined, as it was then specified.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to AFP that the group was informed at the end of 2019 that “Bill Gates sought to establish an intimate relationship with an employee of the company in 2000. A committee of the board of directors examined the issue, assisted by an outside law firm, to conduct a thorough investigation. "
Resignation of the board of directors before the end of an investigation
This engineer of the group had affirmed, in a letter, to have maintained a relation of a sexual nature with Bill Gates "for years", details the economic daily, specifying that the resignation had taken place before the end of this investigation.
Also according to the "Wall Street Journal", the members of the board of directors had also inquired about the connections between Bill Gates and the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, prosecuted for trafficking in minors. Bill Gates’s defense said it was “philanthropic relationships,” which he “regretted,” the daily said.
Bill Gates, who had founded Microsoft in 1975, had given up the general management of the group in 2000, to devote himself more to its foundation, before leaving any executive function at Microsoft in 2008. His seat as director was the last function that still linked him to the giant he co-founded.
Jeffrey Epstein’s shadow on divorce
This is not the only mention of the private life of the billionaire: in an article on Sunday, the "New York Times" claims that Bill Gates has repeatedly made insistent advances with employees of Microsoft and the Bill and Foundation. Melinda Gates. The New York daily reports, like the "WSJ", of the 2000 liaison affair brought to the attention of Microsoft's board of directors.
The "NY Times" also claims that Bill Gates helped cover up a case of sexual harassment for which his portfolio manager Michael Larson was allegedly guilty. According to two people informed of the case, Melinda Gates would have expressed her disagreement in 2018 on the way in which this file had been handled by her husband, who had allowed Larson to remain in office through a financial transaction with the alleged victim.
The New York newspaper also returns to Jeffrey Epstein, whom Bill Gates would have known from 2011, three years after the sulphurous financier pleaded guilty to soliciting the prostitution of a minor. Melinda French Gates is said to have expressed unease over her husband's spending time with the sex offender, but Bill Gates continued to date him, according to "New York Times" sources.
When this familiarity between Epstein and the founder of Microsoft was revealed publicly in October 2019, Melinda French Gates reportedly called in divorce lawyers. She would then have started the process that culminated in the announcement in May 2021 of the end of their marriage.
