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Microsoft founder Bill Gates (archive picture 2018): "These claims are wrong."
Photo: Markus Schreiber / AP
Microsoft executives apparently met with company founder Bill Gates in 2008 to talk about his "inappropriate" e-mails with an employee.
As the "Wall Street Journal" reports, Gates is said to have flirted with the woman on the news.
The executives warned him against continuing this inappropriate practice, according to the report.
Brad Smith and another executive were involved in the meeting.
Smith was Microsoft's premier attorney at the time and is now president of the company.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Gates agreed to stop writing such emails at the 2008 meeting.
The case was then filed;
also because there was no evidence that Gates and the clerk ever met privately.
As reported by the AP news agency, Microsoft confirmed the newspaper report on Monday;
but did not want to comment on it further.
The Bill Gates office, however, stated in a statement, "These allegations are false." The rumors were heated up from people ignorant of the facts and, in some cases, of significant conflicts of interest.
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen.
Gates was CEO of the company until 2000, and in 2008 he retired from day-to-day business.
He was chairman of the board of directors until 2014 and then served as an ordinary member.
In 2020 he left the Board of Directors completely.
Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw told the Wall Street Journal that the warnings from the management team to Gates were issued shortly before Gates withdrew from day-to-day business.
In the emails to the employee, Gates is said to have suggested meetings in free time, the newspaper quoted Shaw as saying.
The news was kept in a flirtatious tone and was inappropriate, "but not overly sexual".
Microsoft investigated Bill Gates' affair
This is not the first time there have been reports of potential misconduct by gates in the workplace.
In 2019, the Microsoft board of directors hired a law firm to investigate another case: An engineer said she had had a sexual relationship with Gates for several years.
A spokeswoman for Gates confirmed at the time that there had been an affair almost 20 years ago that ended "amicably".
This internal investigation only became public after the couple Bill and Melinda Gates made their separation public in May of this year.
The divorce became official in August, having been married for 27 years.
Transparency notice: The Gates Foundation supports media companies in the USA and Europe, including the “Global Society” project at SPIEGEL with around 2.3 million euros over three years. Read more about it here.
aar / AP