Microsoft executives told co-founder Bill Gates to stop sending "inappropriate" emails to a female employee in 2008, the business confirmed via email following 'a Wall Street Journal report Monday. Gates left Microsoft's board in 2020 as the company investigated a separate, more recent relationship the billionaire allegedly had with an employee, according to The Journal.
After 27 years of marriage, Bill and Melinda Gates announced in May that they're going through a divorce.
According to The Journal, then-general counsel Brad Smith (now Microsoft's president) and then human resources boss Lisa Brummel (who've since retired) met with Gates in 2008 about an email exchange between him and a female employee from the previous year. Gates allegedly suggested meeting the employee outside of work.
A company spokesman told the Journal that the emails weren't "overtly sexual," but they were considered inappropriate. Gates reportedly agreed to end sending such emails, and the employee never complained.
A Gates spokesman denied the claims, dismissing them in a statement sent to CNET as "false, recycled rumours from sources who have no direct knowledge, and in some cases have significant conflicts of interest."
