After the co-founder of Microsoft rejected to join his charitable endeavor, Jeffrey Epstein allegedly threatened to reveal an affair Bill Gates supposedly had with a Russian bridge player.
According to The Wall Street Journal, which cited persons familiar with the situation, the infamous child abuser—who took his own life in 2019—seemed to threaten Gates in a 2017 email regarding the alleged relationship with Russian card whiz Mila Antonova.
Gates and Antonova played in a tournament together in 2010, following Antonova's relocation to the Bay Area to work as a software engineer, according to the newspaper.
Although Antonova revealed in a 2010 video about her love of bridge that she was friendly with Gates, sources told the Journal that the two allegedly had a brief romance when Gates was still wed to his then-wife, Melinda French Gates.
According to the story, Epstein met Antonova while she was looking for investors for a bridge academy and later paid for her to attend a software coding school.
According to the Journal, Epstein requested financial compensation from Gates in the 2017 email for the expense of supporting Antonova's coding education.
Following his conviction for child sex crimes, the pedophile met with the CIA director and the former White House counsel, according to new Jeffrey Epstein documents.
The message was sent shortly after the tech giant turned down the convicted sex offender's invitation to join his multibillion-dollar organization, insiders told the newspaper.
After Epstein was found guilty in Florida in 2008 of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, Gates, 67, previously acknowledged and expressed sorrow for meeting with Epstein numerous times in the 2010s to raise money for the Gates Foundation.
"Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates," a spokesperson for Gates said.
Gates never paid up over the threat and that he had "no financial dealings" with Epstein, the spokesman added.
Antonova told the Journal that she didn't know who Epstein really was when they met, thinking he was just a "successful businessman and wanted to help."
"I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did," Antonova said, while declining to comment on her alleged relationship with Gates.
After losing to Gates in their tournament match, which the business magnate won, Antonova was motivated to launch her own company teaching others how to play the game she adored.
Boris Nikolic, Gates' principal advisor at the time, introduced Antonova to Epstein, a prominent financier at the time who agreed to meet her in his Manhattan home in 2013, according to sources, New York Post added.
"I don't know why he did that," she told the Journal. "When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could."
In November 2014, Epstein also gave her access to an apartment in New York City. Antonova claimed that during her brief visit, she did not engage with Epstein or anybody else.
According to sources who spoke to the Journal, Epstein appeared to be trying to contain the damage after being found guilty of sex crimes and intended to establish a multibillion-dollar philanthropic foundation with Gates as the marquee donor.
While trying to secure the foundation with JPMorgan Chase, Epstein allegedly mentioned Gates, but neither he nor the bank were willing to cooperate.
"I deeply regret that I ever met Epstein," Nikolic, who worked with Epstein on philanthropic proposals, told the Journal. "His crimes were despicable. I never saw anything like his illegal behavior. My heart goes out to his victims and their families."
The alleged relationship with Antonova would be the second such affair Gates has been accused of engaging in during his 27-year marriage with Melinda.
Through a spokesperson, Gates admitted in 2021 that he had an almost 20-year romance with a Microsoft worker. The relationship, the spokeswoman added, "ended amicably" before Gates left the firm to concentrate on his philanthropy.
According to Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw, the incident was investigated by the company's board in 2019 after they received an email from an engineer.
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