Bill Gates admits having an affair with a Microsoft employee
Two weeks after the announcement of his divorce from Melinda Gates, the billionaire confirmed having had an extramarital affair with a Microsoft employee in the early 2000s. This affair was also the subject of an investigation, initiated at the end of the year. 2019 by the company.
The case would it be the cause of the resignation of Bill Gates? Two weeks after the announcement of his divorce, the billionaire admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a Microsoft employee at the dawn of the 2000s, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Sunday, May 16. He was then CEO of the company, and married since 1994 to Melinda French, now Melinda Gates. "There was an affair twenty years ago, which ended in a friendly manner," confirmed Bridgitt Arnold, spokesperson for Bill Gates, to the American daily. An investigation, conducted by a law firm and focused on this relationship deemed "inappropriate" by members of Microsoft's board of directors, was opened at the end of 2019.
An "intimate relationship"
At the time, an employee wrote a letter to the said board of directors, of which Bill Gates was still a member. The engineer said there that the 65-year-old businessman "had sought to start an intimate relationship with [her] during the year 2000". According to her, the two would have had sexual relations on several occasions during the following years. The employee had also expressed the wish that Melinda Gates read the letter. Three months after his re-election to the Microsoft board of directors, Bill Gates announced his resignation on March 13, 2020.
A departure that would, according to Bridgitt Arnold, have nothing to do with the relationship mentioned. "Gates' decision to leave the board is in no way related to this' problem '," she said. In fact, it has been several years since he has expressed his wish to devote more time to his charitable works. ” Microsoft representatives, for their part, said the company had shown "considerable" support for the employee behind the revelations.
Dinner invitations
According to the New York Times, Bill Gates made several attempts to approach Microsoft employees. In 2006, while he was still chairman of the board of directors of the company, the billionaire would have proposed to one of them to have dinner with him. “If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend I never sent this email,” he reportedly wrote. The following year, he would have made a similar invitation to another employee, during a cocktail party. "I would like to see you," he would have slipped to her. Would you like to have dinner with me? " Proposals to which the two women, embarrassed by such advances, would never have acted on. The employees, however, stressed in the columns of the New York Times that Bill Gates' behavior was not that of a sexual "predator", and that they were free to reject his advances without risking any possible impact on their careers. .
The shadow of Jeffrey Epstein
Others, however, regretted that the billionaire did not publicly disapprove of the actions of his colleague Michael Larson, accused of sexual harassment. In 2018, the alleged victim of the fund manager had agreed to sign a financial agreement, provided with a confidentiality clause. A decision that Melinda Gates would not have viewed very favorably.
The ex-wife of Bill Gates has also reportedly expressed her reservations about the friendship between her husband and Jeffrey Epstein, the American businessman accused of trafficking in minors and who died in his prison cell in August 2019. Bill and Melinda Gates have since announced their divorce in early May after 27 years of marriage. "We no longer think we are able to evolve together, as a couple, in this next stage of our lives," they explained on their respective Twitter accounts.
