Melinda French Gates on Thursday criticized her former husband Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men, for his past relationship with American financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sex crimes and who committed suicide in prison in 2019.
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In her first TV interview since announcing her divorce in May, Ms. French Gates, who still co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with her ex-husband, also admitted to meeting — just once — multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein .
Asked by a CBS journalist about the reasons for her separation from Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates replied that “several things” had led to it and that she “didn’t like that he met Jeffrey Epstein”.
At the time, “I told him clearly,” added the 57-year-old leader and philanthropist whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at six billion dollars.
Without saying when she herself had seen Mr. Epstein, Ms. French Gates confided that she had “regretted him the second that (she) had
“He was abominable, he was evil incarnate. I had nightmares afterwards. I am heartbroken for these young women,” testified Melinda French Gates on CBS.
Jeffrey Epstein, found hanged in a Manhattan jail in August 2019, had sexually exploited underage girls and his network of connections and friendships stretched from ex-presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, to Britain’s Prince Andrew and the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, found dead in his cell in the prison of Health in Paris, two weeks ago.
In August, at the time of the finalization of his divorce, Bill Gates – 66 years old and whose fortune is valued by Forbes at 129 billion dollars – admitted on CNN that it had been “a huge mistake to spend time” with Jeffrey Epstein, notably to raise money for his philanthropic foundation.
Since the announcement of the divorce after 27 years of marriage, Bill Gates’ reputation has been tarnished by revelations of extramarital affairs and accusations of inappropriate behavior towards women at Microsoft.
The Wall Street Journal thus revealed that his final departure, in March 2020, from the computer giant he had founded in 1975, would in fact be linked to a relationship deemed “inappropriate” with an employee in the early 2000s. The economic daily also claimed that members of the company’s board of directors had inquired about the links between MM. Gates and Epstein.