According to a report on Sunday, Jeffrey Epstein threatened to disclose Bill Gates’ alleged affair with a Russian bridge player after the Microsoft co-founder declined to join his charity effort.
In a 2017 email, the notorious pedophile, who committed suicide in 2019, attempted to threaten Gates over the alleged affair with Russian card-wiz Mila Antonova, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing persons familiar with the situation.
According to the publication, Gates met Antonova in 2010 while competing in a competition after she moved to the Bay Area to work as a software engineer.
While Antonova admitted to being close with Gates in a 2010 video about her love of bridge, the two supposedly had a brief romance while Gates was still married to his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, sources told the Journal.
Antonova’s Entrepreneurial Pursuits
According to the story, Jeffrey Epstein met Antonova while she was looking for financial backers for a bridge academy and later paid for her to attend software coding school.
The Journal claims that in a 2017 email, Jeffrey Epstein asked Gates for payment for the expense of supporting Antonova’s coding education.
According to the newspaper, the message arrived shortly after the tech titan declined to join the convicted sex offender’s multibillion-dollar foundation, which he was attempting to launch with JPMorgan Chase.
Gates, 67, has already admitted to and expressed regret for meeting with Epstein in the 2010s as part of efforts to seek money for the Gates Foundation, following Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida on charges of soliciting and hiring a minor for prostitution.
“Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates,” a spokesperson for Gates said.
The official further stated that Gates never paid the threat and had “no financial dealings” with Epstein.
Antonova told the Journal that when they met, she had no idea who Epstein was and assumed he was just a “successful businessman who wanted to help.”
“I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did,” Antonova stated, declining to elaborate on her alleged affair with Gates.
Following her tournament match against Gates, which resulted in the billionaire’s victory, Antonova was inspired to launch her own business teaching people how to play the game she adored.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Attempted Blackmail
Boris Nikolic, Gates’ top adviser at the time, introduced Antonova to Epstein, a well-connected financier who agreed to meet her at his Manhattan home in 2013, according to the Journal.
Although Epstein declined the assignment, she stated that he did agree to contribute to her software engineering studies.
“I don’t know why he did that,” she told the Journal. “When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”
In November 2014, Jeffrey Epstein also presented her with an apartment in New York City. Antonova stated that she had no interaction with Epstein or anybody else during her brief visit.
According to sources, Epstein appeared to be on damage control following his sex-crime conviction and intended to establish a multibillion-dollar philanthropic foundation with Gates as a major donor.
While working to secure the foundation with JPMorgan Chase, Epstein allegedly dropped Gates’ name, but Gates and the bank refused to work with him.
According to insiders, the denial spurred the email demanding the billionaire to reimburse him for Antonova’s education, sources told the Journal, suggesting Epstein was attempting to blackmail Gates over the alleged relationship, which had by then been over for years.
Melinda Gates came to know about Bill Gates’ alleged affair
In remarks, Gates, Nikolic, and JPMorgan Chase all stated that they regret ever meeting with Jeffrey Epstein on charity concerns.
“I deeply regret that I ever met Epstein,” Nikolic, who worked with Epstein on philanthropic proposals, told the Journal. “His crimes were despicable. I never saw anything like his illegal behavior. My heart goes out to his victims and their families.”
The alleged romance with Antonova is the second such affair Gates has been accused of having throughout his 27-year marriage to Melinda.
In 2021, Gates disclosed through a spokeswoman that he had an affair with a Microsoft employee for nearly 20 years, a relationship that “ended amicably” before Gates stepped down from the company to focus on his philanthropy.
According to Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw, the company’s board of directors investigated the matter in 2019 after receiving an email from an engineer.
The woman demanded changes to her Microsoft employment in the email, as well as that Melinda read her letter admitting the affair.
The email sparked an investigation into Gates as calls for him to resign intensified, but the billionaire was re-elected to Microsoft’s board before leaving in 2020.
The affair was revealed after several claims that Gates had inappropriately asked out several women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
It is unknown how much Melinda was aware of her husband’s alleged activities.