Bill and Melinda Gates divorce: Meet the Microsoft employee whom Gates dated in the past

Billionaire couple Bill Gates and Melinda Gates left everyone shocken few days ago when they took to social media to announce about their divorce after remaining married for 27 years.

Days after the announcement of divorce, several reports started surfacing that Bill Gates affairs with other women was one of the main reasons why Melinda decided to part ways.

It may be recalled that Gates', one of the world's richest persons in the world, questionable pursuit of female employees at Microsoft was first revealed around two decades ago.

In 1998, Wendy Goldman Rohm wrote a book titled The Microsoft File in which it was claimed that Gates was not a man of hish morals and he was not an asexual as assumed by many.

In her book, Rohm said that Gates had an affair with an attractive young sales manager at Microsoft’s German office. She said that Gates started dating this woman five years after he started seeing Melinda.

The claims made in the book were dismissed by Microsoft at that time but the U.S. Justice Department was more convinced of the veracity of the book and it later subpoenaed it and Rohm during probe into Microsoft’s business behaviour.

Rohm said that German-born and US-educated Stefanie Reichel was just 25-year-old when Gates had a seven-month relationship with Gates. According to Rohm, Gates first saw Reichel at a Microsoft meeting in Monte Carlo in April 1992.

He emailed her to say that seeing her had ‘energised’ him, adding, ‘I hope I didn’t stare or anything.’

Gates was so smitted by Reichel's beauty that he cancelled his flight back to the US in order to spend more time with her. Gates then sent her several mails and love letters and the two then met in San Francisco and in Seattle.

Reichel, however, admitted that she was ‘uncomfortable’ about having an affair with Gates.