Scandalous world of the most famous geek
WHAT a week to be Bill Gates! Having failed to hit Ctrl+S on his marriage and money, the billionaire businessman’s reputation crashed spectacularly this week as details of his checkered past lifted the veil on the freak behind the world’s most famous geek.
From growing revelations about his uncomfortably close relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, bizarre endeavours to land the Nobel Peace Prize, office shenanigans and sexual harassment, Gates is drowning in a scandal vortex.
An unquestionable genius of our time, the Microsoft co-founder was the world’s most important and influential donor, a civic-minded role model who showed big corporate how capitalism’s gains can be used to make the world a better place.
However, the latest sensational revelations have stripped away his “good geek” veneer to reveal the man behind the public persona – and consequence culture is bearing down hard.
Consequence culture, the evolved version of cancel culture, seeks to hold celebrities, and those in public positions, accountable for their actions.
Ellen Degeneres was recently slayed by the sword of consequence culture after a Buzzfeed expose blew the lid on what was happening behind the scenes of her popular daytime talk show, Ellen.
As employees came forward with stories of toxic working conditions, racism, harassment from senior producers and malfeasance on the part of DeGeneres herself, the tide turned against the TV doyenne and she was called to account for her actions.
So, how long does it take to go from hero to zero when you’re Bill Gates? Just three weeks, it seems.
Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates announced their divorce on May 2, when he was still the world’s most-loved billionaire. Fast forward three weeks, the mighty Bill
Gates is now one of those creepy guys at the office your mom warned you about – cannon fodder for tabloids as his life and illustrious career devolve into a melodrama, ripe for a Netflix series.
Surely that kind of fall from grace must result in whiplash.
While the world sang his praises, all was not well at Xanadu 2.0 – the Gates’ $130m Lake Washington home – for the past few years.
Gates’ influence was waning and not even his R134bn fortune could buy him the personality that Melinda is said to have craved during their 27-year marriage.
The resulting divorce announcement by one of the world’s most famous and richest couples, was greeted with a collective jaw drop from Ethiopia to the US.
Years before Melinda called it quits on their marriage, citing irreconcilable differences, Gates was reportedly pursuing women who worked at Microsoft.
His spokesperson admitted he had an affair with an employee 20 years ago.
People with direct knowledge of his overtures have come out to say that Gates pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on more than one occasion.
It is reported he was known for asking female employees out on dates after watching them at work.
In 2019 the Microsoft board hired a law firm to investigate one of these claims. The following year Gates stepped down from the board. This was the same year Melinda opened up, in a rare interview, about how Gates struggled to separate his work life from his private life. Little did we know how on the money that revelation was.
News also broke this week of how Gates protected his longtime money manager, Michael Larson, against a sexual harassment claim in 2018, a move rebuked by Melinda. Insiders said while Gates moved to settle the matter confidentially, Melinda insisted on an outside investigation.
Larson is still in his job.
EPSTEIN, the wealthy American financier and convicted sex offender found dead in his New York jail cell in 2019, is a stain Gates is finding impossibe to wash off.
Latest reports claim the software pioneer used Epstein’s connections to try to secure the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gates reportedly brushed aside Epstein’s 2010 child prostitution solicitation conviction because he believed the embattled financier could help him win the prize.
Norwegian newspaper DNMagasinet reported last October that Gates had arrived with Epstein to a March 2013 meeting at the home of then-Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjørn Jagland in Strasbourg, France.
The meeting drew renewed attention this week when an anonymous Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ex-employee told The Daily Beast: “He thought that Jeffrey would be able to help him, that he would know the right people, or some kind of way to massage things, so he could get the Nobel Peace Prize.”
A Gates spokesperson denied the claim: “While a Nobel Prize would certainly be a great honour, it is false to state that Bill Gates was ‘obsessed’ with the honor, set it as a goal, or campaigned for it in any way.”
It also emerged that Gates took a number of meetings at the paedophile’s $77m mansion in New York where he used to complain about his “toxic” marriage.
One of the people who was at the meetings told the Daily Beast: “Going to Jeffrey’s was a respite from his marriage. It was a way of getting away from Melinda.”
A representative for Gates disputed the claims, denying he received any marriage advice from Epstein or complained about his wife.
Melinda, on the other hand – after taking time to clear her head on a private $132 000-a-night island – has engaged estate and trust lawyers as part of her divorce team.
It is believed she aims to challenge Gate’s famous $10m-apiece inheritance to his children. He has repeatedly said the rest of his vast wealth will go to charity.
High-profile divorce attorney Harriet Newman Cohen told Page Six: “Now that Melinda has control, maybe she wanted to leave more to her children than $10 million each.
“We see divorces for the reason that the mother wants to protect the children. She may be like every other woman, protecting her children.”