Jeffrey Epstein reportedly learned that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had an affair with a young Russian woman and later appeared to threaten to expose the tryst if Gates refused to do business with him.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates met Russian bridge player Mila Antonova in 2010 when she was in her 20s and he was in his mid-50s.
Epstein met Antonova in 2013 and paid for her to attend software coding school. After she graduated, and while Epstein was trying to get Gates to join a project he was working on, Epstein reportedly sent Gates an email asking to be reimbursed for her schooling.
The amount of money the schooling cost was trivial for people as wealthy as Epstein or Gates, the report said.
Sources told the publication that the email implied that Epstein could expose the affair if Gates cut off his ties to Epstein.
“Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes,” a spokesperson for Gates said. “Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.”
The spokesperson said that Gates did not make the payment.
Epstein reportedly sent the message after Gates declined to join a multibillion-dollar charitable fund that he was trying to create with JPMorgan Chase that would have paid Epstein millions of dollars in fees and would help to rehabilitate his image after he pled guilty to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008.
Gates had over a half dozen meetings scheduled with Epstein beginning in 2011 that included trips to Epstein’s private residence in New York, according to the report.
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