A private law firm was retained by Microsoft’s board of directors to review a decades old “intimate partnership” with Bill Gates’ employees. The probe, reported by a group spokeswoman on Sunday, took place in the months before the billionaire resigned last year.
“In the latter half of 2019, Microsoft expressed concern that Bill Gates wanted to establish a romantic relationship with a company employee in 2000,” a spokesperson of the company told NPR.
“A committee of the Board investigated the issue with a comprehensive inquiry with the help of a non-law firm. During the investigation, Microsoft provided the employee who raised the issue extensively.”
An article in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday revealed that Microsoft’s board concluded that Gates was going to give up when his previous romantic relationship with a “inappropriate” Microsoft engineer was still under consideration.
However, a Gates spokesperson refused any association between his departure and the inquiry of the Board.
“Nearly 20 years ago, there was an affair that started friendly. The decision of Bill to move away from the Board was in no way linked to this issue, “In a statement shared with the NPR, a Gates spokesperson wrote. “He actually said he wanted to devote more time on his philanthropy a few years ago.”
Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and one of the world’s wealthiest people valued at almost 130 billion dollars, was newly examined in the last few weeks following announcement this month of his divorce from Melinda Gates which ends a marriage of 27 years. Melinda Gates wrote in a court statement that the marriage was “irretrievably dissolved.”
A further research, The New York Times Sunday, outlined how Bill Gates supposedly “pursued” many women in connection with Microsoft and its establishment, gaining a “reputation for dubious behaviour in working environments,” the paper wrote.
But the Times revealed that Melinda Gates was offended by a relationship between Gates and sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein — whom Gates supposedly stayed near even though Epstein was arrested for having solicited sex with girls as young as 14 — who was reported to be launching the process of divorce.
This chain of events is contested by a spokesman for Bill Gates.
“It is highly disappointing that so many misconceptions have been written regarding the reason, the circumstances and the time frame of the divorce of Bill Gates,” said the Gates spokesperson to the NPR.
“The gossip and speculation of Gates’ divorce is getting more and more ridiculous and it is sad that people who have little to no understanding of the case are defined as ‘sources,'” said Gates’ spokesman.
Gates, 65, who warned of the risks of lethal airborne viruses years before the pandemic, said that he had left his board at Berkshire Hathaway in March 2020 to dedicate more money to philanthropic reasons, including environmental health and climate change efforts.
Gates’ resignation came three months after his seat was re-elected by the Microsoft council.
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