A newly surfaced report has revealed details that allege convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had once attempted to extort Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates over an extramarital affair after the tech figure failed to participate in a multibillion-dollar charity.
Citing people familiar with the incident, the report claimed the extortion case centered around an alleged romantic affair between Gates and a bridge player since-identified as Mila Antonova.
Antonova reportedly first approached Epstein with a business venture idea in which she wanted to start her own business that would teach people how to play bridge. Boris Nikolic, an adviser to Gates at the time, had directed her to Epstein in 2013.
While the financier declined her venture idea, he did agree to pay for her education. He also provided her an apartment to stay in while she was in New York City in 2014. Antonova said she had no interaction with Epstein or anyone else while she stayed there.
By 2017, Epstein reportedly sent an email to Gates requesting he be reimbursed for Antonova's education. A spokesperson for Gates said he did not pay the money, adding Gates had “no financial dealings” with the disgraced financier.
Epstein later allegedly threatened to expose the affair that same year after Gates dodged a philanthropic venture Epstein was trying to establish with JPMorgan Chase. Epstein had hoped to use his relationship with Gates to legitimize himself in the eyes of the bank.
“Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates,” a spokesperson for Gates told media.
The alleged affair with Antonova is the second of which Gates has been accused of while he was in his 27-year marriage, the other being an alleged affair of almost two decades that he had with a Microsoft employee.
Beginning in 2011, Gates had more than six meetings scheduled with Epstein, including dinners at Epstein’s New York townhouse. Gates also flew on Epstein's private jet from New Jersey to Florida in March of 2013. Later that month the two traveled to France together, before meeting again in 2014.
By this time Epstein had already been accused of sexually abusing girls as young as 14 in 2006, and pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.
“I am disgusted with Epstein and what he did,” Antonova said, while declining to comment on her alleged relationship with Gates. She later added she was unaware of Epstein’s true identity, including his criminal history, and “just thought he was a successful businessman and wanted to help.”
"I don’t know why he did that,” she said. “When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”
An explosive 2018 report by the Miami Herald revealed dozens of more women who were abused by Epstein, and led to his arrest in 2019 on sex trafficking charges. However, he never faced the charges after being found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. The death was later ruled a suicide.