Bill Gates Had a Car-Changing System for Meeting Women, Forced Staff to Keep Quiet

Source: The Daily Mail

For years there have been whispers, within Microsoft and in Gates’s broader professional and social circles, about inappropriate extramarital relationships. None of it was entirely shocking, despite the seeming contrast with his public persona. Bill and Melinda’s relationship began as an office romance, with Bill as the boss and Melinda as the younger employee whom he flirted with at a conference before asking her out in the company parking lot. As The New York Times reported, Bill pursued women who worked for him a few times when he was the chairman of Microsoft, once emailing an employee to ask her out to dinner, and another time telling a woman who worked for the Gates Foundation that he wanted to take her out to dinner while they were on a business trip to New York. According to the Times, the women did not feel pressured, but the balance of power was hopelessly lopsided. In 2019, Microsoft’s board of directors opened an investigation into Bill’s behavior after it was notified about his advances on an employee in 2000, according to The Wall Street Journal. Bill stepped down from the board the following year, after the company hired a law firm to look into the allegation. (A spokeswoman has said that his “decision to transition off the board” had nothing to do with the affair.)

For the people who worked for him, Bill’s behavior was something of an open secret. The former employee who signed an NDA said there were times when Bill came into the office driving a Mercedes, and an hour later, one of his security personnel showed up with a golden brown Porsche that Bill drove away in. “We all assumed that it was when he was with women,” the employee said. “I knew there were many offsite meetings that were not on his calendar.” According to someone close to Bill, his infidelities were no secret to many of the people around him. Yet another source close to Bill disputed that he would disappear from the office, saying he was “one of the most intensely scheduled people on the planet.”

It’s not clear how much Melinda knew about her husband’s behavior or these rumors, or how much they factored into her decision to file for divorce. People close to the couple said there had been tension for some time, that they had been living separate lives for years, and that the decision to separate had been delayed until their youngest daughter graduated from high school. The Times reported that in 2018, Melinda was unhappy with how Bill dealt with a sexual harassment claim against his longtime money manager, insisting on bringing in outside investigators. And then in 2019, when the relationship between her husband and Jeffrey Epstein became public knowledge, she hired divorce lawyers, setting a plan into motion.

Source: The Vanity Fair