WSJ "Attacked Weaknesses After Failed Joint Venture"
Gates Side "Failed Attempt to Exploit Past Relationship"
Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender and former hedge fund manager, reportedly tried to blackmail Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft (MS), over an affair, according to the US daily The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 21st (local time).
According to the report, Gates met Mila Antonova, a Russian-born bridge player in her 20s around 2010. Although the specifics of how and how often they met are unknown, WSJ speculated that Gates, known as an enthusiast of the card game bridge, likely met her through playing the game.
Antonova pursued an online education business to promote bridge. To raise $500,000 (about 660 million KRW) in investment, she met with Boris Nikolic, a scientific advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a close associate of Gates, who then introduced Antonova to Epstein. Epstein reviewed proposals through several meetings with Antonova but did not invest.
Epstein, who failed to secure funding, sent Bill Gates an email related to the affair
After failing to secure funding, Antonova decided to become a software programmer herself and sought to borrow tuition fees to apply to a programming coding school. At this time, Epstein supported the tuition without any conditions. Epstein was then working with JP Morgan to establish a charitable fund worth billions of dollars, intending to restore his reputation tarnished by sex crime allegations.
Subsequently, Epstein pushed a project to establish a charitable fund worth billions of dollars with JP Morgan to restore his reputation, repeatedly trying to recruit Gates as a major donor.
However, Gates declined, and in 2017 Epstein sent Gates an email demanding repayment of the coding school fees he had paid for Antonova. Sources said this was not actually to get the money back but a message indicating that Epstein knew about the relationship between the two and could expose it.
A spokesperson for Gates said, "Gates only met Epstein regarding charitable matters," adding, "After Epstein repeatedly failed to involve Gates, he tried to threaten Gates by using their past relationship, but it was unsuccessful."
Antonova refused to comment on Gates and explained that she did not know who Epstein was when she met him. She said, "I had no idea he was a criminal or had any ulterior motives," adding, "I find everything about that person and what he did disgusting."
Meanwhile, Epstein, an American billionaire hedge fund manager, was arrested in 2019 for sexually exploiting thousands of teenage girls since the 1990s and later committed suicide in a New York jail. Since then, a wide network involving political, business, and academic circles has been revealed, causing those involved to face difficulties.
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