Microsoft brass knew that founder and former chairman of the board Bill Gates was propositioning feminine employees on the firm as early as 2008 and advised him to cease, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Gates, who on the time was married to his now-ex-wife Melinda Gates, has already admitted to at least one affair with a feminine engineer that came about round 2002. That indiscretion reportedly wasn’t uncovered by Microsoft till someday in 2019. Gates had lengthy since left his position as CEO and had departed as chairman of the board in 2014, however he resigned from the board fully shortly after colleagues discovered of the affair. The incident reported by the Journal on Monday entails a separate lady, a mid-level worker that Gates reportedly despatched flirtatious emails asking to satisfy off-campus and out of doors of standard work hours.

Gates despatched the emails in 2007, in line with the outlet, and Microsoft discovered of them the following 12 months. Then-General Counsel Brad Smith and then-Chief People Officer Lisa Brummel met with Gates and instructed him that the messages weren’t OK and wanted to stop instantly. Gates reportedly admitted that possibly sending them wasn’t the best thought and agreed to cease asking the girl for a liaison.

Microsoft’s board decided that no additional motion was warranted as a result of the difficulty by no means expanded outdoors emails, the Journal reported.

Microsoft verified that the incident occurred, with firm spokesperson Frank Shaw telling the paper that “While flirtatious, they [the emails] were not overtly sexual, but were deemed to be inappropriate.” Representatives for Gates selected to as a substitute deny the matter completely. Spokeswoman Bridgitt Arnold advised the Journal the accounts of such inappropriate interactions had been “false, recycled rumors” from secondhand sources, some with conflicts of curiosity.

The Journal additionally reported that it had discovered extra concerning the board’s hiring of an unbiased regulation agency to analyze the affair discovered of in 2019, resembling that Smith and now-CEO Satya Nadella had been concerned and that chairman John W. Thompson requested members conscious of the inquiry to not leak it to the total board. That is uncommon, legal professionals acquainted with most of these investigations advised the Journal, as sometimes your complete board is notified. However, “several current and former” members of the board advised the paper they believed the matter was adequately dealt with on the time.

In addition to the 2 accounts of the Microsoft founder’s unseemly interactions with feminine staff, Gates’s fame has been badly broken by experiences of his obvious friendship with the late billionaire, pedophile, and convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 whereas awaiting prosecution on federal youngster intercourse trafficking costs.

After Epstein’s dying, Gates initially denied that he was associates with Epstein in any respect and characterised any interactions between them as mere fundraising actions for his charitable basis’s philanthropic endeavors. But a sequence of media experiences emphasised that the 2 frolicked on quite a few events and regardless of the protestations of Melinda Gates, who apparently advised Gates that hanging up a friendship with a person convicted of procuring a toddler for prostitution in 2008 was a foul thought. One former staffer on the charitable basis advised the Daily Beast that Gates hoped Epstein may assist him win a Nobel Prize. Bill and Melinda’s divorce was reportedly kicked in movement when she discovered reporters had been digging into the matter.

Gates was visibly caught off guard and clearly unsettled when requested about Epstein throughout a PBS interview in September 2021, telling Newshour host Judy Woodruff “You know, I had… dinners with him… I regret doing that…”

“… Uh, you know, those meetings were a mistake,” Gates added. “They didn’t result in what he purported, and I cut him off. You know that goes back a long time ago now. I just… so there’s nothing new on that.”

When requested if he had discovered any classes from the PR catastrophe, Gates oddly responded, “Well, he’s dead, so, uh, in general, you always have to be careful.”

Maria Klawe, who labored as a Microsoft director from 2009 to 2015, advised the Journal that she wasn’t conscious of any issues concerning Gates’s interactions with different girls on the firm however that he typically acted like he was above the principles governing the habits of others.

“He certainly gave the impression that he felt that he had a standing that gave him a particular, a set of rights, that other people wouldn’t have,” Klawe advised the paper.