Last year, members of the board of the American software company Microsoft concluded that the company’s founder Bill Gates should resign from their ranks due to the ongoing investigation that he had a relationship with an employee of the company years ago. It was written by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which refers to unnamed sources familiar with the situation.
Gates resigned from the board last March, saying he wanted to focus more on his philanthropic projects. His spokeswoman said Gates’ resignation from the board had nothing to do with the investigation.
WSJ writesthat members of the board of directors hired a law firm at the end of 2019 to review the information in a letter from a Microsoft employee. She claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Gates for several years. Some board members concluded during the investigation that Gates should no longer hold a senior position at Microsoft.
According to WSJ, they wanted to avoid a scandal with one of the leading figures in society, which would resonate strongly in the media due to the nascent MeToo movement. The founder and longtime head of Microsoft then resigned before the board of directors made an official decision on the matter, sources say.
Microsoft said in a statement that in 2019 it had received information that Gates had sought to “enter into an intimate relationship with a company employee in 2000”. The company then added that the matter was being investigated by a third company and that Microsoft had supported its employee in the investigation.
“Almost 20 years ago, an affair began that ended amicably,” a Gates spokeswoman said, adding that Gates’ resignation from the board was unrelated. “(Gates) had indicated several years before that he intended to spend more time in philanthropy,” she added.
Gates resigned from Microsoft’s governing body in March last year, just three months after he was re-elected to the post by the general meeting. He said in a statement that he wanted to pursue public benefit projects and that he would continue to serve as a technology advisor to the current CEO, Satya Nadella. On the same day, billionaire and philanthropist Warren Buffett also resigned from the board of Berkshire Hathaway investment company.
Sixty-five-year-old Gates and his wife Melinda announced in early May that they were divorcing after 27 years. In the joint statement then on twitter they said that “in the next stage of life, they can no longer grow together as a couple”. In their divorce application, they stated that their marriage was “irretrievably broken.”
According to the WSJ, Gates has been working to divorce several law firms since at least 2019, but the couple has not yet said what specifically led them to divorce. According to WSJ, one of Gates’ concerns was her husband’s relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein. He committed suicide in prison in August 2019, shortly after being arrested on suspicion of sexual crimes. In a 2019 statement, Gates said he had met Epstein for his philanthropic projects and that he regretted the meetings.
Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 and was its boss until 2000. He managed the local software department until 2006 and was chairman of the board until 2014. In recent years, he was an ordinary member of the board and technology advisor to the current boss Nadella, despite increasingly focused on running a charity he runs with his wife.
– .
