Microsoft Board Investigated Bill Gates’ ‘Intimate Relationship’ With Employee

A spokeswoman for Bill Gates denied on Sunday that an investigation into a prior romantic relationship with an employee had anything to do with him leaving Microsoft’s Board of Directors last year.

Elaine Thompson / AP

Microsoft’s board of directors hired a private law firm to investigate a decades-old “intimate relationship” Bill Gates had with a company employee. The investigation, a company spokesman confirmed on Sunday, took place in the months before the billionaire resigned from the board last year.

“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 company spokesman told NPR.

“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.”