Bill Gates Addresses His Friendship with Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein: ‘I Was Foolish to Spend Any Time with Him’

Bill Gates is opening up about the time he spent with Jeffrey Epstein, calling their conversations together “a huge mistake.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, published on Jan. 24, the former Microsoft CEO, 69, spoke about the meetings he had with the late convicted sex offender.

“In retrospect, I was foolish to spend any time with him. And he, sort of, got time with various people by spending time with other people,” he told WSJ. “So yes, I think I was quite stupid. I thought it would help me with global health philanthropy. In fact, it failed to do that it was just a huge mistake.”

Gates added that the controversies that stemmed from meeting with the disgraced financier — who died by suicide at age 66 in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal conspiracy and sex trafficking charges — made him more weary of building connections.

“Definitely,” he said with a laugh. “I mean, are you kidding?”

The Wall Street Journal previously reported in 2023 that Epstein threatened to expose Gates for having an alleged affair with a Russian bridge player in 2017 while he was married to now-ex-wife Melinda French Gates.

The outlet reported at the time that Epstein had failed to get him to join in a charitable fund that never came to fruition. Epstein emailed him in 2017 asking to be reimbursed for money he spent to send the bridge player, Mila Antonova, to software coding school. The message also seemingly hinted at the idea that Epstein could expose the alleged relationship if an association between the two men was not maintained, per the newspaper, which reported that no payment was made.

A spokesperson for Bill told PEOPLE in a statement at he time that “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.”

“Mr. Gates never had any financial dealings with Epstein,” the spokesperson added. “As Bill has said before, it was a mistake to have ever met him.”

The pair’s meetings also allegedly caused a rift between Bill and Melinda, a source told PEOPLE in 2021. His meetings with the late convicted sex offender had irked Melinda, 60, for years, the insider said: “Epstein is definitely a sore spot. That’s a long time for issues to fester.”

The New York Times reported in 2019 that Bill first met Epstein after the latter had already served jail time for soliciting prostitution for a minor and was registered as a sex offender.

Although Bill told WSJ at the time that he did not have “any business relationship or friendship” with Epstein, the Times reported that beginning in 2011, the two men met multiple times to discuss Epstein’s proposal to help raise funds for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The fundraising efforts never came to fruition.

He has previously made similar comments about Epstein, in which he expressed his regret for having any ties to him.

Appearing on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 in 2021, he addressed his past ties to Epstein, saying, “It was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there. There were lots of others in that situation, but I made a mistake.”

“I had several dinners with him hoping that what he said about getting billions of philanthropy for global health through contacts that he had might emerge,” he said at the time. “When it looked like that wasn’t a real thing, that relationship ended.”