Bill Gates’ philanthropist image is losing its lustre after the press started to dig into the magnate’s past following the announcement of his divorce with his wife Melinda. What else may resurface in addition to Gates’ affairs and meetings with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein?
It has recently turned out that Bill Gates, the legendary founder of Microsoft, had an affair with an employee and reportedly “pursued” several women at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation long after he got married.
Still, it was Bill’s relations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein which apparently became the last straw for his wife. In the autumn of 2019, a few months after the paedophile financier was found dead in his prison cell in Manhattan, The New York Times released a report unveiling deeper ties between Gates and Epstein. According to Vanity Fair, Melinda began talking to divorce lawyers around the time the story came out.
Does the End Justify the Means?
The first meeting between Gates and Epstein came in 2011, three years after the infamous financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, became a registered sex offender and later spent 13 months in jail, according to Business Insider.
One might wonder as to why Bill Gates turned a blind eye to Epstein’s reputation, notes Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist.
“People less rich than Bill Gates are normally quite cautious in nurturing relationships with outsiders,” he says. “Moreover, until recently, Bill Gates was thought to be especially wise and financially astute. So, it is particularly odd that Gates would spend precious time, over years, with someone such as Jeffrey Epstein, leaving aside Epstein’s known, criminal proclivities. At the very least, spending time with Epstein, particularly after his release from prison shows remarkably poor judgement on the part of Bill Gates.”
The Daily Beast suggested on 18 May that Gates turned a blind eye to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes conviction apparently because wanted the well-connected financier to help him secure the Nobel Peace Prize.
“He [Gates] thought that Jeffrey would be able to help him, that he would know the right people, or some kind of way to massage things, so he could get the Nobel Peace Prize, which is what Bill wants more than anything else in the world,” a former Gates Foundation employee said, as quoted by the media outlet. “I think he was ultimately disappointed it didn’t work out.”
Furthermore, Norwegian business newspaper DN reported in October 2020 that Gates and Epstein travelled to Strasbourg in 2013 and met with Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who was at that time the chairman of the Nobel committee. However, a Gates representative has denied that the tech magnate had campaigned for the Nobel Prize in any way.
Jeffrey Epstein was not the only “bad guy” Bill Gates was hanging out with: he had also maintained close ties with Rajat Kumar Gupta, a former director of management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company (from 1994 to 2003). Gupta was charged with insider trading in 2012 and spent two years in jail. Earlier he served as an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Rajat Gupta filled many roles in the Gates Foundation and organisations such as the Global Fund that were and are supported by Gates,” Ortel remarks.
