The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, said this Wednesday, 4, that he regrets “every minute” he spent with financier Jeffrey Epstein, convicted of sexual exploitation of minors.
“I regret every minute I spent with him,” Gates said in an exclusive interview with the Australian broadcaster Nine News. This was the first time that the billionaire spoke out about the accusations made against him after the United States Department of Justice released, last Friday, 30, new files related to investigations involving Epstein.
The documents indicate that Gates met with the financier even after he was convicted and imprisoned in 2008 for sexual exploitation and facilitating the prostitution of minors. In one of the emails included in the material, Epstein suggested that the billionaire had contracted a sexually transmitted infection and tried to hide the fact from his then-wife, Melinda French Gates.
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“Jeffrey wrote an email to himself, but that email was never sent. The email is, you know, fake. So I don’t know what was going through his head,” Gates said. “It just makes me remember every minute I spent with regret and I apologize for doing this.”
The billionaire denied any involvement with the crimes committed by Epstein and said he only attended dinners, without ever going to the financier’s island. “I’ve never met any women. And so, you know, the more this is talked about, the clearer it will become that even though that period was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behavior,” he added.
Gates’ statements came one day after his ex-wife stated that he needed to speak out about his connection with Epstein, exposed in the documents released on Friday.
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“For me, it’s personally difficult whenever these details come up, you know? Because it brings back memories of very, very painful moments in my marriage,” said Melinda in an interview with the Wild Card podcast, on American radio NPR. The first excerpts of the conversation were released on Tuesday the 3rd, but the full text will only be published on Thursday the 5th.
“Whatever questions there are — I can’t even begin to know everything — those questions are for those people and even for my ex-husband,” she said. “They need to answer these questions, not me.”
A spokesperson for Gates told NPR that the allegations made by Epstein are “absolutely absurd and completely false.” “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration at not having an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths to which he would go to trap and defame him,” he said.
Despite being convicted and arrested in 2008, Epstein was released the following year, after reaching a deal of 13 months in prison and placing his name on the federal list of sex offenders. More than a decade later, in 2019, a Florida judge found the agreement illegal and Epstein was arrested again in July of that year, in New York.
A month after his arrest, Epstein was found dead in his cell and an autopsy concluded that he took his own life. The Department of Justice confirmed in July last year that the cause of death was suicide, after reviewing prison files and videos.
