Bill Gates stood before his own employees Tuesday and tried to explain the inexplicable: why one of the world's richest men kept meeting with a convicted sex offender for years, and why he dragged foundation executives into those meetings with him.
The Microsoft founder used a town hall at the Gates Foundation to apologize for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, acknowledging it was a "huge mistake" and admitting he had "two affairs with Russian women" that Epstein later learned about, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
I apologise to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made.
That's Gates speaking to the people who built their careers around his philanthropic brand. The people who now get to answer questions about their boss and a dead sex trafficker at dinner parties.
Gates didn't leave the details vague. He told staff he had two extramarital affairs:
I did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities.
The bridge player is Mila Antonova, whom Gates met at a tournament in 2009. The unnamed nuclear physicist is someone Gates allegedly began a relationship with in 2010, the Daily Mail reported. Both relationships predated his meetings with Epstein, which Gates said began in 2011.
Here's where it gets darker. A person named Boris Nikolic, who had links to both Gates and Epstein, was apparently aware of the relationships and later informed the financier. According to the Journal, Epstein then allegedly threatened Gates over his relationship with Antonova. In a 2013 email to a senior Gates adviser, Epstein reportedly referred to two women he claimed Gates had been involved with during his marriage.
So a convicted sex offender had leverage over one of the most powerful men in the world. And Gates kept meeting with him anyway.
Gates told staff he began meeting Epstein in 2011, three years after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor. That conviction was public knowledge. Epstein had served a prison sentence. He was a registered sex offender subject to an 18-month period of travel restrictions.
None of that stopped Gates from meeting Epstein across multiple countries, including Germany, France, New York, and Washington. Gates also traveled on Epstein's private jet. He maintained contact through 2014.
Gates insists he exercised due diligence:
I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit.
He also claimed he "never stayed overnight" and never visited Epstein's private island. And yet his own wife saw through it immediately. Melinda French Gates raised concerns about Epstein in 2013. Gates himself acknowledged as much at the town hall, giving her credit for being "always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing."
Melinda later went further, calling Epstein "evil personified" and saying she was deeply uncomfortable with her husband's dealings with him. The couple announced their divorce in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
Gates offered a version of the defense you hear from powerful people caught in proximity to monsters: I didn't know how bad it was.
Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it's clear there was ongoing bad behavior.
Think about that sentence. Gates is admitting he knew about Epstein's past crimes at the time. He's saying the new information, likely from previously released U.S. Department of Justice documents, makes it worse. But the old information was already disqualifying. A man convicted of soliciting a minor is not someone whose background requires further scrutiny before you decline the meeting. You just decline the meeting.
Gates told staff he did not properly scrutinize Epstein's background. This from the man who built Microsoft. The man whose foundation employs some of the most rigorous analytical minds in global health. He ran background checks on malaria data but not on the convicted pedophile he kept flying across continents to meet.
Earlier this month, the Gates Foundation said it did not make any financial payments to Epstein or employ him at any time. A foundation spokesman confirmed that Gates "spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions" during the town hall.
The foundation, which Gates started with Melinda in 2000, now has to reckon with the fact that its chairman involved foundation executives in meetings with a sex offender. Gates didn't just make a personal judgment error. He made it an institutional one.
The timing tells its own story. Last week, Gates pulled out of India's AI Impact Summit hours before a scheduled keynote. No explanation was offered. Days later, he's standing before his staff, doing damage control after a Wall Street Journal exposé.
Gates told employees that he and Melinda had once hoped to "grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives." That phase ended. What replaced it is a slow-motion reckoning with the choices Gates made and the company he chose to keep.
His wife saw it. She warned him. He didn't listen. And now, years later, he's asking his employees to accept the same reassurances that didn't convince the woman who knew him best.
