Microsoft board probed Gates in 2000 for relationship with employee: Report

Microsoft Corp.’s directors started a probe into Bill Gates’s alleged involvement with a female employee that was deemed inappropriate and decided that the co-founder had to step down from the board last year, Dow Jones reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The software giant had received a concern in 2019 that that Gates had tried to have an “intimate” relationship with an employee in 2000, Dow Jones cited a Microsoft spokesman as saying. The board reviewed the matter with the help of an outside law firm, the spokesman added.

Board members handling the matter hired the law firm to conduct the investigation after receiving a letter from a Microsoft engineer who said she had a sexual relationship with Gates for years,