Microsoft founder Bill Gates had a sexual relationship with a female staff member in 2000, and resigned while an investigation into the relationship was being investigated by the company board.
The affair came to light after the Microsoft employee wrote to the board detailing the affair – and asked that Gates estranged wife Melinda Gates read the letter.
Gates, 64, quit the board suddenly in 2020 while the investigation was still underway.
Bill and Melinda Gates in 2000, the year the tech mogul and billionaire began an affair with a female Microsoft engineer
The couple are pictured with their three kids Jennifer (center), Rory (right) and Phoebe (left) in 2019. The kids were ‘very angry’ with their father, according to the sources
He quit the board of Berkshire Hathaway the same fay he left Microsoft.
The Microsoft board decided that Gates should step down from the board after the relationship was deemed to be inappropriate, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A Microsoft spokesman told the Wall Street Journal: ‘Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000.
‘A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation. Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.’
A spokeswoman for Gates said his decision to leave the board had nothing to do with the affair.
‘There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably.’
The spokeswoman told the Journal his ‘decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter. In fact, he had expressed an interest in spending more time on his philanthropy starting several years earlier.’
The revelations came just hours after a separate report in the New York Times revealed how Gates asked two women who worked at Microsoft and his philanthropic foundation out on dates while still married to Melinda.
Melinda, who now goes by Melinda French Gates, was also upset at the way allegations of sexual harassments against Michael Larson, one of Gates’ key lieutenants and the manager of his personal fortune, were handled.
Bill and Melinda Gates, one of the world’s richest couples with a fortune of $130billion, announced this month they were getting divorced, with Melinda saying the marriage is ‘irretrievably broken’ in divorce filings.
Bill Gates, pictured in 1985, had an affair with a Microsoft engineer in 2000 which came to light when the woman wrote to the company board in 2019
The unnamed female employee wrote to the Microsoft board in 2019, initiating an independent investigation. The Gateses, who filed for divorce this month, seen here after receiving the Commander of the Legion of Honor in Paris in 2017
Bill and Melinda Gates, seen at their marriage in 1987. The Microsoft board decided the relationship between Gates and the female staff member was inappropriate, and he quit while it was being probed
Melinda was also unhappy about the way sexual harassment allegations against Gates’ key moneyman Michael Larson, above, were handled
The Times reported that Gates, 64, asked out a Microsoft employee in 2006 after watching her make a presentation.
‘If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,’ Gates emailed the employee, according to the Times.
The woman took his advice and pretended it never happened.
A couple of years later, Gates asked out an employee with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The pair were in New York for a work trip, when he told her: ‘I want to see you. Will you have dinner with me?’
The woman told the Times the approach made her feel uncomfortable, but she laughed it off.
The report said there was no expectation that the women would suffer professional repercussions for spurning Gates’ advances.
It’s not clear whether Melinda Gates, who met Bill at Microsoft in the late 1980s, was aware of her husband’s advances.
Melinda also stepped in after Michael Larsen, the man who has overseen the enormous expansion of Gates’ personal fortune through an investment vehicle Cascade Investment, was accused of sexual harassment.
In 2017, a person wrote to Bill and Melinda to complain that Larson was harassing a female staff member at a bicycle shop part-owned by a venture capital firm Rally Capital, owned by the former married couple.
The woman reached a settlement in 2018, signing a non-disclosure agreement and receiving a payout.
However, Melinda was not happy with the outcome and ordered an independent investigation.
According to the New York Times, Larson was placed on leave during the investigation but was reinstated and still leads Cascade Investments.
The tipping point though appears to have been revelations about Gates’ close ties to Jeffrey Epstein, which caught Melinda by surprise when they were first reported in October 2019.
Their friendship began in 2011, three years after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Gates continued to spend time with Epstein despite Melinda expressing concerns.
She hired divorce lawyers the same month that revelations emerged about their relationship, which culminated in the announcement this month that their 27 year marriage was over.
A spokeswoman for Gates said ‘There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably.’ She said his ‘decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter.
The same day Gates quite Microsoft he also announced he was stepping down from his position with the board of Berkshire Hathaway, run by his friend Warren Buffet
In a press release the tech mogul said he would continue to serve as a technical adviser to Chief Executive Satya Nadella, above
The same day Gates quite Microsoft he also announced he was stepping down from his position with the board of Berkshire Hathaway, run by his friend Warren Buffet.
In a press release the tech mogul said he would continue to serve as a technical adviser to Chief Executive Satya Nadella.
Bill was already a billionaire he married Melinda in the early 1990s. He founded Microsoft in 1975 and became the world’s youngest billionaire in 1987 at the age of 31. He also met Melinda that year when she was working at the company where he served as CEO.
Gates’ spokeswoman Bridgitt Arnold denied Gates had mistreated employees.
‘It is extremely disappointing that there have been so many untruths published about the cause, the circumstances and the timeline of Bill Gates’s divorce,’ Arnold said.
‘Your characterization of his meetings with Epstein and others about philanthropy is inaccurate, including who participated,’ she told The Times.
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