Quick note that simply associating with Epstein _may_ not imply badness of the kind you suggest. There's some suspicion that Epstein was some sort of intelligence operative and therefore may have engaged in all kinds of measures to attempt to befriend, influence and compromise powerful individuals. If that's the case, he would have used the approach we hear about vs underage girls etc if he thought that would be successful, but other approaches if that didn't seem likely to work. So it may be possible that an individual had contact with Epstein in a way totally unrelated to human trafficking. e.g. he said "come on my plane and you can meet <very interesting person>" or "come to my island and I'll invest in your company". Basically, he was a person focused on compromising and influencing people, using a wide gamut of techniques, not simply a person focused on being an abuser/trafficker.

I read Paul Allen’s biography. There it seemed Gates could be (quite) a bit of a jerk. However, this thing about shares isn’t mentioned.

And was Gates removed from the board of Microsoft? Where did you get that information?

Seriously?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/30/microsoft...

He "left" the board, which is the equivalent of "You can't fire me, I quit". He was removed.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/17/bill-gates-m...

Okay, you are right! I didn’t recall that bit of the shares and the news from the second article completely went by me.