The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has not yet been directly impacted by the divorce of its founders, but may be in the middle of a process of separation of assets and labor from the ex-couple. According to the American magazine Barron’s, Melinda and Bill Gates sold all shares of Apple e Twitter that the couple’s philanthropy foundation had just before they announced the divorce.
The sale of the shares was made on March 31, just over a month before Bill and Melinda announced their divorce through social media, on May 3. According to the Barron’s, the Foundation owned 1 million shares of Apple at the end of 2020. In relation to Twitter, just over 272 thousand shares were sold at the time.
The equivalent sum of all the shares can reach hundreds of millions of dollars, at a time when both were already discussing about the divorce process. On May 3 itself, when the separation appeared in the media, the case was referred to the American court and Melinda received nearly $ 2 billion in shares from companies that she and Gates were investing on the same day.
Now, with the process going – a hearing has already taken place on May 14 – the estimated fortune of US $ 146 billion will be shared between the ex-couple, who has three children together. Outside the American court, Melinda has already taken about $ 3 billion in shares of Gates, and set out to become one of the richest women in the world.
The separation was marked by scandals involving Bill Gates, after Melinda stated that their relationship was already “broken”. Last week, Satya Nadella said Microsoft will continue to investigate the extramarital affair that Gates had with an employee in the early 2000s. The friendship of the businessman with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is also pointed out as one of the factors for which Melinda did not want to continue with the marriage 27 years old.
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