Bill Gates’ extramarital affair with Russian bridge player, Mila Antonova, was revealed recently when a report claiming Jeffrey Epstein threatened to expose the romantic affair.
Antonova would have been in her late 20s when they supposedly were fooling around behind the scenes and engaged in a relationship.
Gates, a billionaire tech titan, would have been in his late 50s and still married to now ex-wife Melinda Gates.
Details of the alleged illicit pair’s relationship were first revealed in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
Antonova was born and raised in Russia and is an accomplished card player. She attended a university in Russia from 2000 to 2005, according to her now-deleted LinkedIn profile.
After coming to the United States, Antonova started working as a software engineer in San Francisco. She also founded a bridge club at some point after arriving in America.
Not much is know about her family or upbringing in Russia.
Gates and Antonova first met when they crossed paths at a bridge tournament in Washington, DC back in 2009.
In a video posted online in 2010, Antonova had talked about meeting Gates at the North American Bridge Championships a year earlier.
“I didn’t beat him, but I tried to kick him with my leg,” she said in the video.
It isn’t clear exactly when Gates and Antonova embarked on their alleged romantic tryst or how long it may have gone on.
But at the time, Gates was married to wife Melinda, with whom he shares three children.
The couple divorced in May 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
Antonova also has ties to Jeffrey Epstein after being introduced to him while seeking funds to launch an online business dedicated to teaching people how to play bridge.
One of Gates’ top advisers, Boris Nikolic, made the introduction between Epstein and Antonova. Antonova met Epstein at his Manhattan townhouse in November 2013, when she told him she was trying to raise $500,000 for her BridgePlanet venture.
A year later, the Russian card player stayed at a New York City apartment provided by the late pedophile financier, but she maintains she didn’t interact with him or with anyone else while there.
Antonova said Epstein never ended up investing in her BridgePlanet.
After Antonova failed to get her business up and running, she turned to software programming and started asking people to lend her money to kick off a programming boot camp. Epstein was among those who offered up cash.
“Epstein agreed to pay, and he paid directly to the school,” Antonova said. “Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that. When I asked, he said something like he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”
Antonova persistently stated she had no idea who the notorious pedophile was when they first met.
“I had no idea that he was a criminal or had any ulterior motive,” she said. “I just thought he was a successful businessman and wanted to help.”
After investing in Antonova’s programming boot camp, Epstein sent an email to Gates in 2017 asking the Microsoft founder to reimburse him for the undisclosed amount.
Epstein sent the email after Gates refused to join the convicted sex offender’s multibillion-dollar charity he was trying to kick off with JPMorgan Chase.
“Mr Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates,” a rep for Gates said.
The representative said Gates never paid up over the veiled threat and that he had “no financial dealings” with Epstein.
Gates has previously admitted to and expressed regret for having several meetings with Epstein in the 2010s, after Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida on charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, as part of efforts to raise money for the Gates Foundation.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Epstein learned of the alleged tryst between Gates and Antonova.
Antonova declined to comment on her alleged relationship with Gates.
