Tech mogul Bill Gates has denied convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s claim he caught a sexually transmitted disease after sleeping with “Russian girls”, saying he saw a relationship with Epstein as a way to benefit his philanthropic endeavours.
The Microsoft co-founder has been put back in the spotlight after appearing in the latest release by the US Justice Department of more than 3 million documents from the so-called Epstein files. They included a claim by Epstein that Gates caught an STD and had asked for antibiotics he could “surreptitiously give” to his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, from whom he is now divorced.
Gates denied the allegations.
“Apparently, Jeffrey wrote an email to himself. That email was never sent. The email is false, so I don’t know what his thinking was there. It just reminds me every minute I spent with him, I regret, and I apologise that I did that,” Gates told Nine’s Charles Croucher.
Asked why Epstein, who died in prison in 2019, would make such a claim, Gates said: “It’s factually true that I was only at dinners. I never went to the island, I never met any women. And so, you know, the more that comes out, the more clear it’ll be that although the time was a mistake, it had nothing to do with that kind of behaviour.
“I met Jeffrey in 2011, the focus was always [that] he knew a lot of very rich people, and he was saying he could get them to give money to global health.
“You know, in retrospect, that was a dead end, and I was foolish to spend time with him. I was one of many people who regret ever knowing him.”
French Gates has said questions over allegations made in the files should be answered by her ex-husband.
“Those questions are for those people, and for even my ex-husband, they need to answer those things, not me,” she said.
Epstein first pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting prostitution from someone under 18 in 2008.
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Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.