Bill Gates: investigated for relationship with em …

The Wall Street Journal published this Sunday that Bill Gates left Microsoft’s board of directors in 2020 while being the subject of an internal investigation by a relationship he maintained with an employee deemed “inappropriate”. The report comes after Gates announced his divorce from his wife Melinda after 27 years of relationship and amid questions about his links to financier Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for systematic abuse and sex trafficking of minors.

Microsoft Corp. board members have ruled Bill Gates should step down in 2020 as they investigate a romantic relationship with a Microsoft employee which was deemed inappropriate, ”the newspaper reported, citing sources who preferred to remain anonymous.

A Microsoft spokesperson consulted by the AFP agency assured that the company had been alerted in 2019 that “Gates sought to begin an intimate relationship with a company employee in 2000. A board committee reviewed the case, with help from an outside law firm. “Over the weekend, the New York Times previously reported that Gates had” a reputation for having a questionable behavior in work environments ” and that on certain occasions he made advances to the women who worked for him.

The employee in question, a company engineer, said in a letter that she had a sentimental relationship with Gates “for years”The Wall Street Journal reported. For his part, a spokeswoman for Gates told the newspaper that the connection between him and the engineer was “An adventure almost twenty years ago which ended amicably ”and that “His decision to leave the board is in no way linked to this issue”.

For its part, The Daily Beast on Monday continued an investigation that focuses on another controversial point in Gates’ life: the link with Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2014, years before the financier committed suicide in prison after being accused a second time of systematically abusing and exploiting dozens of teenagers in his Manhattan mansion and their residences in Palm Beach and the Virgin Islands. As this media had reported in recent days, Melinda Gates “was furious with the relationship between the two men.”

Between 2011 and 2014, The Daily Beast reported, Gates “met Epstein dozens of times, mainly in the financier’s house in Manhattan. “According to two anonymous sources quoted by the newspaper, who claim to have witnessed these meetings, Epstein gave Gates advice “on how to end his marriage to Melinda” after the Microsoft co-founder complained about her and claimed it was atoxic marriage“.

“Going to Jeffrey’s house was a respite from their marriage,” one of the sources said, adding that the men “were very close.”Gates encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media after his guilty plea in 2008.“In 2008, Epstein was first charged with sexually abusing several teens in Florida, but was able to avoid federal charges after a plea deal with the district attorney, for which he only spent ‘in prison. 13 months.

Microsoft’s board also questioned the relationship between Epstein and Gates at the time and, in this context, the Microsoft founder’s team responded that he had only met Epstein to “philanthropic reasons“and that” he regretted having done it “, according to the newspaper.