World’s number 4 richest man and founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates has acknowledged through a spokeswoman that he had an extra-marital affair with a female employee.
He said that the development led the board of Microsoft to investigate the relationship shortly before he resigned in 2020.
The extent of influence the investigation of the affair which happened 2 decades ago had on the decision of himself and wife Melinda to divorce is not yet known.
Announcing their divorce after 27 year of marriage, the couple posted identical and simultaneous tweets saying that, “after a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage.”
Melinda described the marriage as “irretrievably broken. There was an affair also 20 years ago which ended amicably,” Bridgitt Arnold, Gates’s spokeswoman said in a statement to Washington Post.
Frank Shaw, Microsoft Spokesman said that members of the board in 2019, investigated the allegations of a Microsoft employee that she had a sexual relationship with Gates.
According to him, “Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000.
“A committee of the board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation.
“Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern,” Shaw said.
While the board did not reveal their findings, there is no indication that Bill Gates’s decision to quit Microsoft has any links to the extra-marital affair.