After Bill Gates rejected to join his philanthropic initiative, the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein allegedly threatened to reveal an alleged relationship the Microsoft co-founder had with a Russian bridge player.
In a 2017 email, Epstein, who later took his own life in 2019, appeared to threaten Gates on the alleged affair with the Russian Mila Antonova, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Gates and Antonova played in a tournament together in 2010, following Antonova’s relocation to the Bay Area to work as a software engineer, according to the newspaper.
Although Antonova revealed in a 2010 video about her love of bridge that she was friendly with Gates, sources told the Journal that the two allegedly had a brief romance when Gates was still wed to his then-wife, Melinda French Gates.
According to the story, Epstein met Antonova while she was looking for investors for a bridge academy and later paid for her to attend a software coding school.
The Wall Street Journal said that in the 2017 email, Epstein requested that Gates pay him back for the money he had spent on Antonova’s coding training.
Mail arrived just after Gates declined to participate in the billion-dollar charity the convicted sex offender was attempting to launch with US bank JPMorgan Chase, insiders said the newspaper.
In an effort to generate money for the Gates Foundation, Gates, 67, has acknowledged and expressed sorrow for meeting with Epstein multiple times in the 2010s after Epstein was found guilty in Florida of soliciting and procuring a child for prostitution.
“Mr. Gates met with Epstein just to discuss philanthropy. Epstein tried unsuccessfully to use a previous relationship to scare Mr. Gates after repeatedly failing to get him to get past these issues, a Gates spokesperson said.
According to the spokeswoman, Gates never followed through on the threat and had “no financial dealings” with Epstein.
When they first met, Antonova claimed to the Journal that she had no idea who Epstein actually was and had assumed that he was simply a “successful businessman who wanted to help.”
Antonova said, “I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did,” but she would not address her purported friendship with Gates.
