Bill Gates apologised to the staff of his foundation on Tuesday for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and admitted to two affairs but stated he did not participate in the convicted sex offender’s crimes, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
At a town hall on Tuesday, Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, said it was a “huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” and to bring Gates Foundation executives to meetings with Epstein.
“I apologise to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made,” Gates said, according to a recording reviewed by the Journal.
Bill Gates Relationship With Epstein
Gates’s relationship with Epstein has received increased scrutiny recently due to the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files, which included emails Epstein wrote to himself in which he claimed that Gates had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and requested antibiotics to surreptitiously give to his then-wife, Melinda. Gates has denied this allegation.
The files also contained images of Gates with women whose faces were redacted. He said during the town hall that Epstein had asked him to take the photos with his assistants.
“To be clear, I never spent any time with victims, the women around him,” said Gates, whose foundation is one of the world’s leading global health philanthropies.
Still, the men’s relationship was definitely “the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation”, he said. “And our work is very reputational sensitive. I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us.”
