Bill Gates left the Microsoft board in 2020 when the board was pursuing an investigation into his romantic relationship with a female employee, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The founder and former head of the US technology giant stepped down as board chair in March 2020.
“Microsoft Corp. board members decided that Bill Gates needed to step down from its board in 2020 as they pursued an investigation into the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate,” this is according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited people close to the matter.
However, a Spokeswoman for the billionaire said his decision to step down has nothing to do with the romantic involvement with an employee.
According to the spokeswoman, Gates left Microsoft to focus more on his philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The employee, an engineer, claimed in a letter to have had a sexual relationship with Gates “over years,” the Journal reported.
According to the Journal, some board members also asked about links between Gates and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for allegedly trafficking minors.
Gates’s team assured the board the Microsoft founder had met Epstein for “philanthropic reasons” and “regretted doing so,” the Journal said.
Gates, who founded Microsoft in 1975, stepped down as the company’s CEO in 2000, saying he wanted to focus on his foundation.
He left his full-time role at Microsoft in 2008.
His seat as board director, which he left in March 2020, was the last position that officially linked him to the company.
Gates and his wife Melinda, who co-founded their charity two decades ago to battle global poverty and disease, announced their divorce on May 3 after 27 years of marriage.
