“Playing with fire.”
An email sent by Jeffrey Epstein to Bill Gates’ chief of staff Larry Cohen on April 30, 2018, according to documents released by the Justice Department.
Epstein told Cohen he had just put Mira Antonova up in one of his Upper East Side apartments for a week. Russian bridge player Antonova narrates wealth She revealed through her lawyer that she had a “relationship” with Gates around 2010, and there were reports that she was Gates’ mistress and had received financial help from Epstein for many years. Epstein wanted Gates to know.
In fact, Epstein wanted Gates to know for a long time.
Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January show that from 2013 to at least 2018, Epstein helped process Antonova’s visa, wired her cash, repeatedly placed her in various apartments he maintained in Manhattan and paid for her coding education. Epstein later mentioned the payments and pressured Microsoft’s billionaire founder to repay them, emails show.
In one exchange, Epstein invoked the “sanctity of friendship.” In a July 29, 2017, email to Cohen, he quoted Gates himself saying: “If you can help delay it for three years, that should be enough” — a reference, Epstein said, to providing Antonova with housing and funding after her relationship with Gates ended. Three years passed, Epstein wrote. He “paid the tuition and helped with the visa,” and Antonova had to “stop playing bridge and live on a friend’s couch every day without air conditioning.”
“I know you and Bill share the same views on the sanctity of friendship,” he wrote to Cohen.
The pressure campaign surrounding the payment to Antonova was part of Epstein’s broad and complex effort to penetrate Gates’ inner circle and benefit from the Microsoft co-founder’s connections and influence. Fortune reported on the effort earlier this week.
Antonova’s lawyer told wealth She was neither aware of Epstein’s efforts to pressure Gates nor provided “services, information, or any other assurances or conduct in exchange for” his support. The lawyer said Antonova “naively accepted” Epstein’s help and believed he sincerely wanted to help her.
In 2019, five months before he was arrested for conspiring to sex traffic minors, Epstein was still emailing Gates demanding repayment.
“As Gates has always said, he regrets meeting with Epstein,” a spokesperson for Gates wrote to wealth. “The documents show how Epstein extensively worked to insert himself into Gates’ life — either directly or through others around Gates — and how Epstein continued those efforts after Gates stopped meeting and communicating with him. To be clear, Gates never witnessed or participated in any unlawful or illegal conduct.”
Cohen, who at the time was not only Gates’ chief of staff but also the managing partner of Gates Venture Capital, Gates’ private office, did not respond. of wealth Request for comment. (Cohen now works at venture capital firm Biomatics Capital.)
Antonova’s lawyer confirmed in a letter wealth Antonova met Gates at a bridge match in 2009 and “had a relationship with him for some time.”
“Mira happened”
Epstein’s relationship with Antonova began with Boris Nikolic, then Gates’ chief scientific adviser to the Gates Foundation and its investment company Bgc3. Nikolic was also one of Epstein’s most frequent correspondents, with the two exchanging thousands of emails in the decade from 2009 until Epstein’s death in 2019.
On May 23, 2013, Nikolic, who was still working at the Gates Foundation, sent an email to someone who appeared to be an immigration lawyer about Antonova, describing her as a Russian friend who had “overstayed her stay in the United States” on a crew visa. The case “requires a lot of creativity,” he wrote, adding that he was “willing to shoulder the costs.”
Antonova’s lawyer confirmed wealth Nikolic referred her to an immigration attorney but disputed his suggestion that the fees were paid, saying instead that Antonova and her “then-husband” paid the fees. According to her lawyer, Antonova last contacted Gates in May 2013, around the time Nikolic reached out to Gates.
That summer, Nikolic’s working relationship with Gates began to unravel, documents show. He exited the foundation in September with a $5 million advance. In a late-night email to Epstein in November, Nikolic tried to piece together a timeline of what happened between him and Gates from his inbox.
On May 22, the day before he emailed his immigration lawyer, he wrote: “Mira happened.” Three weeks later, Epstein and Gates held a meeting in Paris, which both men mentioned in Justice Department emails. A month later, Nikolic said, Gates sent him an email saying “Melinda found out about this” and that their working relationship had to end.
Just after midnight, Epstein responded: “He’s crying because he knows it’s wrong. Not because he’s sad.”
“Epstein was a master manipulator and I deeply regret being associated with him,” Nikolic wrote in a statement. wealth. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Gates later confirmed the incident. According to the Gates Foundation, at a town hall last month with Gates Foundation staff Wall Street Journal, He told employees he was “having an affair,” including “with a Russian bridge player who met me at a bridge tournament.” He said Nikolic knew about the events and told Epstein about them.
how it started
On July 14, 2013, during Nikolic’s negotiations to withdraw from the Gates Foundation, Epstein first mentioned Antonova to Nikolic in their correspondence: “Ask the lawyer who helped Mila about her situation?” U.S. Justice Department documents show that by November, Epstein had arranged a meeting with Nikolic and Antonova.
Over the next year, Epstein funded at least part of Antonova’s life. On October 9, 2014, he emailed his accountant, Richard Kahn, wire transfer instructions for an entity called Bridge Union Inc.: “Rich sent Mila $7,000 this month. USD, and again next month.” Emails between Epstein’s assistant Leslie Grove, Antonova and building staff also show that Grove sent apartment details and access codes to the apartment Epstein maintained on the Upper East Side.
“Everything was great,” Antonova emailed Grove in late November 2014. “Thank you for having me.”
Antonova’s lawyers confirmed that between 2014 and 2018, Epstein made “numerous” unsolicited monetary gifts to pay for her coding education and “multiple times” offered use of his apartment. The lawyer added that Antonova only met Epstein twice, that Epstein was never present during her stay and that she had no reason to believe that Epstein used her situation as leverage.
By mid-2016, Gates had ceased direct contact with Epstein. His last email to Epstein in Justice Department documents was from December 2014. Since then, all communications have been filtered through Cohen, whom Epstein distrusted and described in emails to Nikolic as “Melinda’s boy.”
Epstein responded by making sure Gates knew the connection to Antonova still existed. On June 15, 2016, he sent Nikolic an email that appeared to be addressed to Gates: “You can tell your kids that I still hear from Mila. I put her through computer school.”
A year later, on July 21, 2017, Antonova wrote to Epstein to express her gratitude: “You and Boris [Nikolic] Did an extraordinary thing for me. Created opportunities for me to grow and take control of my life. Their help was crucial to what she accomplished at the time: sleeping in friends’ living rooms in Palo Alto, paying $700 a month for a couch and taking her coding classes to prepare for tech industry interviews, all funded by Epstein.
The next day, Epstein sent Cohen an email saying he had heard from “an old friend” of Gates and that they should talk. He told Cohen he planned to continue spending money on “his old friends,” but added that he “received neither thanks nor reimbursement.” He gave Cohen a deadline: “If you think I shouldn’t, tell me by tomorrow night.”
“Your friend Bill is crazy”
Privately, Epstein was surprised by Gates’s cold shoulder. On July 25, 2017, he wrote to Nikolic: “Your friend Bill is crazy. His old girlfriend. Can’t afford air conditioning, can’t afford bridge… This story will take Trump off the front page. The world’s richest man is so cheap, his former bridge girl and toys, living on a friend’s couch. Wow.”
Cohen sent Epstein an email saying Gates would soon “give the nod” for them to talk. But on August 6, Epstein emailed again: “Bill didn’t confirm??” Cohen’s response was: “He has been off the grid for a while.”
The silence lasted until December 2017, when Epstein changed tactics. “The word is, I’m running out of money,” he emailed Cohen. Cohen reached out and asked to talk, but Epstein was done with the pleasantries. He responded that he also emailed Gates directly – “asking why I didn’t get BG’s approval and offer to repay the advance as he requested. That’s weird.”
In April 2018, Antonova stayed in Epstein’s apartment again. Building staff emailed Epstein’s assistant, confirming that a welcome letter had been left for “Mila Antanova’s arrival on Thursday, April 26.” A few days later, on April 30, Epstein sent Cohen an email that included the opening lines of the article: “FYI, I had to put Mila in New York for a week. I wasn’t there. It was playing with fire,” he said.
Antonova’s lawyer said she had “no knowledge of and cannot speculate” on Epstein’s communications with Cohen and had no reason to believe Epstein used her finances against Gates.
One last question
On January 5, 2019, Epstein emailed Gates directly: “I assume at some point you’d like to reimburse me… I feel awkward asking.”
Four days later, he wrote to Gates and Cohen again, requesting a meeting: “I think it would be best if we set aside an hour to meet while Bill is on the East Coast.”
It’s unclear whether Epstein received a response. Soon after, he began collecting written records, asking a colleague to dig through “past photos and emails” to determine when Epstein and Nikolic first met Gates at the Washington, D.C., airport — an apparent reference to a December 2013 meeting at the Reagan National Convention Center that Nikolic helped arrange.
On January 20, 2019, Epstein sent Gates an email: “I want you to follow in Bezos’ footsteps.” It was unclear from the email what Epstein meant. Ten days ago, Jeff Bezos announced his divorce from MacKenzie Scott shortly after their divorce. national enquirer Bezos’ affair with Lauren Sanchez was reported.
Five months later, Epstein was arrested on charges of conspiracy to sex traffic minors. A month later, he was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
Gates, who has not been charged with wrongdoing, was asked to testify before a House committee last week about his relationship with Epstein.
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com