Bill Gates has admitted to having affairs with Russian women during his marriage to Melinda French Gates, according to a bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal.
The Microsoft co-founder made the confession during a town hall meeting with staff at the Gates Foundation in Seattle on Tuesday, the Journal reported.
Gates said he had relationships with a “Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events” and a “Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities.”
During the meeting, Gates also addressed his long-scrutinized association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He said he hung out with Epstein in the U.S. and overseas and flew on the financier’s private jet, but insisted he “did nothing illicit” and “saw nothing illicit.”
“To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him,” Gates told staff.
The admission comes amid renewed scrutiny following the release of the Epstein Files, which included an unsent email in which Epstein appeared to reference Gates getting an STD and the “consequences of sex with russian girls.”
While a spokesperson for Gates previously called those claims “absolutely absurd and completely false,” Gates acknowledged on Tuesday that he had affairs with a “Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities.” The “bridge player” was identified by the Journal in 2023 as Mila Antonova, who reportedly met Gates around 2010 when she was in her 20s.
Gates reiterated to staff that “he never spent any time with victims, the women around [Epstein],” according to the Journal. He said it was a “huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” after first meeting the sex offender in 2011, long after Epstein had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution. He said they spent time together until 2014 but he never spent a night around Epstein or on his properties.
“I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made,” he said.
Gates has previously said he was seeking charitable donations, reiterating that “the focus was always he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health. In retrospect, that was a dead end.”
He said this week that he did not properly check Epstein’s background but was aware of some “18-month thing” that had limited Epstein’s travel.
“Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior,” Gates said.
During the town hall, Gates credited his ex-wife, who split from him in 2021 and recently said Gates needed to “answer” for his connections with Epstein, for being “skeptical” of the financier.
Gates ultimately said that his past with Epstein and the newly disclosed emails have cast a shadow over the foundation’s work and its reputation. “It definitely is the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation. And our work is very reputational sensitive. I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us,” he said.
Gates first connected with Epstein in 2011, after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution in Florida. He maintained the relationship despite Melinda’s reported disgust over the association. The couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
