Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates has admitted he has some regrets about his interactions with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a recent interview.
Gates appeared on news program ABC Australia when the topic was raised by presenter Sarah Ferguson, who went point blank at the billionaire on live television.
"Do you regret the relationship that you maintained with him against Melinda's advice and wishes?" Ferguson asked.
Gates looked uncomfortable, saying, "Oh I've said that I'm -- I mean -- you're going way back in time, but I will say it for the over hundredth time, I shouldn't have had dinners with him."
"Epstein had a way of sexually compromising people. Is that what Melinda was warning you about?" Ferguson pressed.
"No," Gates said. "I had dinner with him and that's all."
Gates has said in the past that the meetings with Epstein were intended to potentially raise money for the Gates Foundation, but "they didn't result in what he purported and I cut him off" in an interview with PBS NewsHour.
Gates and Epstein's associations started in 2011, three years after Epstein was convicted of child prostitution.
In a March 2022 interview with CBS This Morning, Melinda French Gates, who finalized a divorce with her husband of 27 years in August 2021, said that his choice to fraternize with Epstein was "one of many things" that led to the demise of the marriage.
