Microsoft founder and U.S. billionaire Bill Gates has said he had no personal relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Gates said he himself eventually cut off all contact with Epstein after Epstein failed to raise money for his charitable fund. He made the remarks last Wednesday at a closed-door hearing before the U.S. Congress’s House Oversight Committee.
Gates voluntarily appeared before the committee and gave his testimony as part of the investigation into the Epstein affair. In his testimony, Gates acknowledged strain in his marriage and an affair, and said Epstein had tried to exploit weaknesses in his private life to blackmail or pressure him. Committee members said Epstein had mainly liked to build ties with influential people to display his own power and reach, and that Gates had been part of that “collection of friends.”
‘I regret every moment’: In his opening statement, Gates made clear he had never seen Epstein engaged in any criminal activity and had received no such indication.
Gates said: “I never went to his private island, his ranch or his Florida residence. I am not involved in any crime.” He said Epstein may have wanted to build a personal relationship with him, but he had no interest in it. He added that he regretted every moment spent with Epstein, and that meeting him had been a wrong decision.
However, Gates’s name appears thousands of times in the millions of pages of documents released by the U.S. Justice Department, and he is seen with Epstein in several photographs. Gates also acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet.
Affair and blackmail attempt: Some draft emails by Epstein that emerged in the investigation documents made sensational claims about Gates’s private life. They alleged that Epstein had arranged special meetings for Gates through Russian women, and that when Gates at one point contracted a sexually transmitted disease, Epstein arranged medication for him.
Gates dismissed these allegations as entirely false and fabricated. He did, however, acknowledge that he had had extramarital relationships with two Russian women. Gates said Epstein had used the information about that affair, adding further falsehoods, to pressure him and trap him.
How he met Epstein: Gates told the committee that his acquaintance with Epstein began in 2011 over discussions about raising funds for the Global Health Initiative. Epstein had been convicted three years earlier on charges of running a sex-trafficking operation in Florida.
Gates said he had made clear from the start that Epstein would have no role in his foundation. Later, in 2014, Epstein arranged a meeting between Gates and a group of potential donors, but no money came from it. Gates said that once he realized Epstein was only making empty promises, he ended all contact and meetings with him.
Democratic committee member Robert Garcia told reporters that Gates knew Epstein had been convicted of a terrible crime yet kept in touch with him to raise money for his foundation. Republican member Tim Burchett said Gates had looked quite shaken during the hearing.
Despite being worth billions of dollars, he appeared rather “beaten down,” Burchett said. Committee members asked how Gates, one of the world’s leading figures in the technology world, could have been so indifferent and incurious about the past background and criminal history of a controversial figure like Epstein — facts that had been known to everyone for a long time.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report