Rumors of an extramarital affair between Bill Gates and Russian poker player Mila Antonova had been circulating long before the billionaire admitted it.
“I’ve had affairs, once with a Russian bridge player I met at competitions and once with a Russian nuclear physicist I met through business,” Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said at a Gates Foundation staff meeting on February 24.
This is the first time Bill Gates has admitted to having affairs with Russian women while married to his wife Melinda. The confession came after emails released by the US Department of Justice revealed that Bill Gates had a close relationship with the pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Billionaire Bill Gates and Russian athlete Mila Antonova at a bridge competition in Washington, D.C., in 2009. Photo: IgniteNYC
In a leaked email, Epstein accused Gates of infidelity, writing that he had “helped Bill buy drugs to deal with the consequences of having sex with Russian girls.”
Gates’ statement is seen as confirming information previously provided by Mila Antonova, a Russian bridge player, about her alleged extramarital affair with the American billionaire.
No one knows exactly when their relationship began or how long it lasted, but Antonova revealed that she first met Gates in 2009 at a bridge-playing event in Washington, D.C. She was in her early twenties at the time, while the American billionaire was 53.
“I didn’t win against him, but I certainly gave him a hard time,” she said in a 2010 New York interview, admitting to having spent years persistently trying to approach Bill Gates.
Antonova was an acquaintance of Anna Chapman, the Russian spy who was deported from the US in 2010 on charges of working for the Russian Federal Intelligence Agency in the US. The two had appeared together in a photograph taken near Wall Street before Chapman’s deportation.
Antonova (right) poses for a photo with Anna Chapman near Wall Street. Photo: NYPost.
In 2013, Boris Nikolic, one of Gates’ key advisors and confidants, introduced Antonova to Epstein when she was seeking funding to start an online bridge-teaching company.
At the time, Epstein had been convicted of soliciting minors for prostitution. Epstein was also in a relationship with Gates. The Microsoft co-founder said he knew Epstein was under an “18-month restraining order” but did not thoroughly check his background when they began their relationship in 2011.
In a 2023 interview, Antonova stated that Epstein paid for her to attend programming training to help her develop software. “He said he wanted to help me because he was rich and wanted to help people whenever he could,” she said.
Nikolic told Epstein about Gates’ extramarital affair with Antonova. Epstein then used this information to persuade Gates to join a multi-billion dollar charity he was trying to establish. When Gates refused, Epstein threatened to blackmail him by revealing the relationship with Antonova.
Epstein demanded that Gates return the money he had invested in Antonova, threatening to reveal the affair to Melinda if he refused. It is unclear whether Gates complied with this demand.
In 2013, Melinda Gates expressed her concerns about Epstein to her husband, but Gates continued to maintain a relationship with the billionaire for at least another year.
Gates, now 70, admitted that maintaining a relationship with Epstein was a “big mistake” and apologized for it, but insisted he had no involvement in the pedophile billionaire’s illegal activities. He said he never stayed overnight at Epstein’s house or visited his private island.
The private Caribbean island of Little St. James was owned by Epstein. American media dubbed it a “pedophilia island,” where Epstein allegedly committed sexual crimes against underage girls and invited several celebrities to visit.
“Knowing this information now makes things a hundred times worse, not only because of his past crimes but also because of the fact that many of his nefarious acts continue,” Gates told staff at a meeting on February 24.
Epstein, born in 1953, was arrested in New York in July 2019 on charges of luring dozens of minors and engaging in sexual acts with them. The businessman faced 45 years in prison if convicted. Epstein denied all charges and was held in a Manhattan jail in New York. While awaiting trial, Epstein hanged himself in his cell in August 2019.
