I can still remember when the world practically swooned at the mention of Bill Gates, the geeky tech genius who transformed the internet as we knew it.
But Gates wasn’t just the richest man in the world. He was a philanthropist, a do-gooder – not like the other money-hungry ‘tech bros’ in Silicon Valley. He and his ex-wife Melinda – who he met in 1987 while she was working in product development for Microsoft – genuinely cared about making the world a better place and devoted many of their billions to curbing malaria, polio and HIV around the world.
We all lapped it up: in 2005, Gates was knighted by our late Queen Elizabeth. President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
But it seems that Gates’s ‘good geek’ reputation was just an act that we all fell for – one designed to cover up a far more sinister personal life.
For years, that facade has been crumbling. A series of unflattering biographies have revealed complaints about his overbearing behaviour as Microsoft’s boss and allegations that his charitable giving has always been a self-serving attempt to launder his own reputation.
But his long-lasting relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York jail cell before he could be tried for sex trafficking, is now the thing that we will remember him for.
Which brings us to the question: what on earth was the world’s most famous ‘philanthropist’ doing cosying up to a man like that?
Last week, we got an insight as to what indeed he might have been doing – thanks to the release of a tranche of almost three million documents relating to Epstein, which were released on Friday by the US Department of Justice.
Bill and Melinda Gates. Recent headlines following the latest Epstein revelations include: ‘Gates, girls from Russia and lurid claims of passing an STD to his wife.’
Bill Gates (stood to the left of Jeffrey Epstein), with Jes Staley, Larry Summers and Boris Nikolic
Among the most shocking are two emails that claim Gates slept with Russian girls, caught a sexually transmitted disease and then asked for antibiotics to slip to Melinda after she caught the STD from him. For his part, Gates furiously denies the allegations.
The emails both appear to be draft letters written by Epstein, to be sent by Gates’s then-top adviser Boris Nikolic around the time of Nikolic’s resignation from the Microsoft billionaire’s charitable foundation. There is no indication that Nikolic himself knew about them.
One of them lashed out at Gates for ending their friendship and goes on to say: ‘To add insult to the injury you them [sic] implore me to please delete the emails regarding your std, your request that I provide you antibiotics that you can surreptitiously give to Melinda and the description of your penis.’
Gates’s lawyers insist the allegations are ‘absolutely absurd and completely false’. They added: ‘The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.’
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? Epstein is long dead and cannot speak from the grave.
Lord alive, what a nightmare. How utterly humiliating not just for Melinda (who since their divorce now calls herself French Gates, using her maiden name) but their three children, Jennifer, 29, Rory, 26 and Phoebe, 23.
However did Bill Gates get into a position where, whether true or not, there are allegations he had unprotected sex with prostitutes before sleeping with his own wife? What kind of immoral dupe is he to have befriended Epstein in the first place?
Another email from Epstein had Boris Nikolic apparently offering his resignation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He wrote: ‘I have been caught up in a severe marital dispute between Melinda and Bill…
‘In my role as his right-hand man I have been asked and wrongly acquiesced into participating in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate, to the ethically unsound and have been repeatedly asked to do thing [sic] that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal…
Melinda with the children… the sad truth is that even the billions her ex-husband worked so hard to earn can scrub him clean of his association with Epstein and his alleged Russian paramours, writes Amanda Platell
‘From helping Bill to get drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with russian girls, to facilitating his illicit trusts, with married women, to being asked to provide adderall [an amphetamine-based drug] fro bridge touramnts [sic], as I am a medial doctor, but have no presriptions [sic] writing ability.’
Perhaps we now know why Melinda was so vague with the reasons she gave back in 2021 as to why her long marriage ended. She and Bill suddenly announced, in a joint statement, that they were separating after 27 years together – claiming that they could no longer ‘grow together as a couple’.
I now wonder if she, like all of us, was a victim of his attempts to portray himself as the good guy.
For Melinda had stuck with him through all his alleged philandering (which Gates has denied), as well as an ‘inappropriate’ relationship with a female Microsoft employee that sparked an internal investigation at the same time as he stepped down from the company’s board in 2019.
She also tolerated the many rumours that Gates was a ruthless and cruel boss, from employees who were routinely silenced by non-disclosure agreements and his aggressive team of lawyers.
Gates’s biographer Tim Schwab has claimed that Gates’s leadership style was once described as ‘management by embarrassment — challenging employees and even leaving some in tears’. Meanwhile, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen used words like ‘browbeating’, ‘personal verbal attacks’, and ‘bullying’ to describe Gates.
So far so horrible. But it was Gates’s relationship with Epstein which tipped Melinda over the edge. And who can blame her?
Gates and Epstein struck up a relationship in 2011, well after it was known that Epstein was a predator. The pair first met at the financier’s seven-floor Upper East Side mansion and the Microsoft boss enjoyed himself so much that he accepted another invitation the following May.
In 2013, Melinda expressed concerns to her husband about Epstein after she met the paedophile for the first time at a dinner at his New York mansion – yet her worries were dismissed by the pompous Gates and he continued to meet Epstein well into 2014.
But as soon as his relationship with Epstein became public in 2019, Melinda, an advocate for women and girls, met with divorce lawyers – two years before her official separation from Bill was announced.
Did she suspect then, as is now alleged, that her husband’s ‘business relationship’ with Epstein involved more than just business?
She is on record as saying, in 2022, that the split was down to ‘many things – but I did not like that [Bill] had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. I made that clear to him.’
She described Epstein as ‘evil personified’ and claimed she had nightmares after meeting him.
At the time, there must have been some comfort for Melinda in walking away with a chunk of their joint $124billion fortune. It emerged last month that, in 2024, Gates made an $8billion donation – as part of their divorce deal – to Melinda’s Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation, which works to advance social progress for women.
But surely, Melinda, no amount of money could make up for your ex-husband’s alleged behaviour?
The sad truth for Melinda is that even the billions her ex-husband worked so hard to earn can scrub him clean of his association with Epstein and his alleged Russian paramours. And that for all his technical genius and philanthropy, it will forever be a stain on the family name.
Shame on Bill Gates. He might be a renowned philanthropist who is determined to rid the world of malaria, but my sympathy is with his wife, who supported him and their family for so many years – only to be fooled like the rest of us.
