Two young women stride along a New York street, barely breaking step to flash smiles at the camera. One of them is slightly out of focus, but her face — and the face of her friend — is unmistakable. Chillingly so. The strawberry blonde on the right is Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, the woman alleged this week to have been the former lover of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — as well as an associate and financial beneficiary of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, — reports Daily Mail.
What makes this photograph sensational, however, is the presence of the flame-haired woman on the left. She is none other than notorious Moscow spy Anna Chapman.
This week, a world exclusive investigation by the Daily Mail has uncovered a potentially disturbing and unexplained link between Gates’s erstwhile Russian ‘lover’ and Kremlin spook Chapman.
While there is no evidence of any wrong-doing on Antonova’s part, it seems to be a connection which raises serious questions for Gates and, of course, for the California-based Russian herself.
Despite repeated approaches this week, it’s still not known whether the 67-year-old Microsoft boss had any knowledge of any potential link between Antonova and Chapman, daughter of a former KGB officer.
Last week, however, Gates’s spokeswoman admitted that paedophile Epstein, who was known to cultivate friendships with the ultra-wealthy in order to exploit them, had ‘tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship’ to threaten the business magnate into doing his bidding.
At the time of his brief ‘relationship’ with Antonova, who is nearly 30 years his junior, father-of-three Gates was still married to his former wife, Melinda.
Registered sex offender Epstein wanted Gates to be an ‘anchor donor’ in a multi- billion dollar global charitable fund he planned to set up, to camouflage his sordid private life, and increase his influence.
The pair had more than half a dozen meetings and Gates once flew on Epstein’s private jet, known as the ‘Lolita Express’. He has since said he regrets meeting with the disgraced billionaire financier, who apparently killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Gates’s spokeswoman has insisted any meetings were ‘solely for philanthropic purposes’. Gates ultimately declined to join Epstein’s charitable fund, and the project did not go ahead.
Even so, the question remains: if Epstein knew about the alleged affair — and later made sure Gates knew that he knew — did he also know about Antonova’s apparent links to Chapman?
Certainly, a relationship between Gates, one of the most influential businessmen on the planet, and a woman who appears to have connections to a Kremlin intelligence agent is troubling.
Anna Chapman also worked as a fashion model