Jeffrey Epstein and his French connection

ItIt was exactly five weeks to the day after his arrest on sex trafficking charges when Jeffery Epstein was found dead in his cell at New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center last Saturday. The financier and convicted paedophile was arrested on July 6th by FBI officers just after his private jet landed at New Jersey’s Teterboro airport, flying in from Le Bourget airfield north of Paris.

Epstein was a regular traveller between New York and the French capital, where he owned an apartment on the upmarket Avenue Foch, close to the Champs-Élysées. His arrest came as he returned from a three-week sojourn in Paris.

In a 13-page Manhattan federal court indictment revealed two days later, prosecutors alleged that Epstein “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” from 2002 to 2005 at his luxurious properties in New York and Florida, that he “enticed and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, minor girls” to “engage in sex acts with him, after which he would give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash”.

Prosecutors claimed that he also paid girls to recruit others, and that, “This way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit”. Appearing before the court on Monday July 8th, Epstein, 66, entered a plea of “not guilty” to the charges, for which, if convicted, he faced a maximum sentence of 45 years in jail.

Following Epstein’s death this weekend, described as an “apparent suicide” but which is still under investigation, US attorney general William Barr said on Monday that investigations will continue into suspected co-conspirators in the alleged sex trafficking. “Let me assure you that case will continue on against anyone who was complicit with Epstein,” Barr said, adding that “any co-conspirators should not rest easy. Victims deserve justice and will get it”.

But while the sex trafficking probe centres on events in the US, evidence emerging from the case suggests that Epstein’s alleged criminal activities spread as far afield as France, and on Monday two French government ministers urged the opening of an investigation “to shed light” on the suspicions. One of Epstein’s accusers in the US case said she had been sent to France on several occasions to serve as his “sex slave” when she was still a minor, and that the financier’s victims included two 12-year-old girls sent to him from France by “one of his friends” as “a surprise birthday present”.

Two of those who are alleged to have taken part with Epstein in his sex trafficking and abuse of minors are British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late, disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell, and French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, co-founder of the model agency MC2.

Both have firmly denied the allegations.

The accusations were levelled by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who said she was first recruited by Maxwell, who has joint French nationality, to work as a “masseuse” to Epstein when she was aged 15, and has accused Maxwell of being both a “madame” for Epstein and an active participant in orgies. Giuffre also alleged she was made to have sex with Brunel and to watch him during “sexual acts with dozens of underage girls” who he brought to Epstein.

Epstein, who moved in elite social circles, notably with high-placed connections in the worlds of business and politics, was first investigated for sex crimes in 2005, when he was suspected by the FBI of organising sex parties with dozens of minors at his luxurious mansion at Palm Beach, and also at his other properties in New York, New Mexico and at his private Caribbean island of Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands. In that case, as revealed in detail by the Miami Herald in an investigation published last November and which prompted the latest indictment against Epstein, he escaped federal charges with a plea bargain deal in 2007. That gave him and his co-conspirators immunity in exchange for his prosecution on charges of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.

After his conviction by a Florida court in 2008, Epstein was placed on the sex offenders register and served just 13 months of a prison sentence, when he was allowed to work at his office during the day. The deal was negotiated Between Epstein’s lawyers and Alex Acosta, then US attorney for Southern Florida. Acosta was appointed as President Donald Trump’s labour secretary in 2017, but on Friday – the day before Epstein’s death – he was forced to step down from the post amid renewed media scrutiny of the extraordinarily lenient deal handed to the financier.

The Epstein affair, with its backdrop of relative impunity for the well-connected, contains an explosive cocktail of power, wealth and sexual abuse. The unravelling story involves relationships of various kinds he enjoyed with the great and famous, including Donald Trump, former US president Bill Clinton, and the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, but also Prince Andrew, leading US lawyer Alan Dershowitz, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, fuelling conspiracy theories that are now abundant on social media.

Feeding 'Epstein's strong appetite for sex with minors'

Before his arrest on July 6th, Epstein, whose wealth was estimated at more than 500 million dollars, had spent three weeks in Paris at his apartment at 22 avenue Foch, arriving there on June 14th. It was his only property outside the US, estimated by his lawyers to be worth 8.6 million dollars.

Epstein enjoyed spending part of the year in Paris, where he had a network of contacts, as demonstrated by his address book, extracts of which were published by the website Gawker in 2015. Under the section “Paris” figured a list of high society names and addresses, and a lengthy contact list under the title “Massage” (see below).

No formal judicial investigation has yet been opened in France to establish whether Epstein did, as has been alleged, engage in sexual offences in the country. In a joint statement released on Monday, French gender equality minister Marlène Schiappa and child welfare minister, Adrien Taquet, said: "The American investigation has brought to light links with France. It therefore seems to us fundamental, for the victims, that an investigation should be opened in France so that all light is shed.”

Contacted by Mediapart, the Paris public prosecution services said “elements” transmitted to it “are in the process of being studied and compared”, adding: “The initial verifications are underway in order to determine whether an investigation should be opened on French territory.”

In a 2011 legal document obtained by Mediapart, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s principal accusers, now aged 36 – who has repeatedly stated that she was a “sex slave” for Epstein between 1998 and 2002, when she was also paid to recruit other girls for him – told her lawyers how Epstein had boasted about two 12-year-old girls he was presented with for his birthday celebrations in Palm Beach.

“It was a surprise birthday gift from one of his friends and they were from France. I did see them, I did meet them," she said. "Jeffrey bragged afterwards after he met them that they were 12-year-olds and flown over from France because they're really poor over there, and their parents needed the money, or whatever the case is, and they were absolutely free to stay and flew out." If her claims are true, the girls would now be aged around 30.

The story of Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s relationship with Epstein was detailed in theMiami Herald investigation published last November . She says she was recruited in 1998 to give him massages by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was at the time Epstein’s girlfriend. Giuffre was then aged 15, and worked as a locker attendant at the Palm Beach club and spa Mar-a-Lago, owned by Donald Trump and who was a friend of Epstein’s until the pair later fell out.

Epstein’s brother Mark has told The Washington Post of the friendship between Epstein and Trump, but so too has Trump, who in 2002 told New York Magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy”. But he has since distanced himself from his one-time friend, and after Epstein’s arrest last month, Trump told reporters at the White House that, “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him […] I had a falling out a long time ago, I’d say maybe 15 years. I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you”.

According to Giuffre’s account, her first encounter to give a massage to Epstein at his home close to the Mar-a-Lago, in 1998, ended in sexual acts with both him and Maxwell, and that for the following four years Epstein and Maxwell used her as a “sex slave”, travelling with Epstein to his various properties in the US and Paris, and also the south of France.

She has also claimed she it was imposed upon her to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who were both acquainted with Epstein. Both the prince and Dershowitz have publicly and very strenuously denied the accusations.

In the 2011 legal document, Giuffre said she finally broke away from Epstein’s grip in 2002, after he “came up with a proposition that I thought was really disgustingly sick”. This involved being inseminated by him “to bear one of his children”, in exchange for a house and a monthly income, she said, and the condition that if she fell out with Epstein “that I would have to sign my child over to him basically and that the child would be his and Ghislaine's, and I would be looking after it as long as nothing happened between Jeffrey and I”. According to Giuffre, “it really showed me for the first time in four years I had been with him that nothing was going to change and I was always just going to be used by him which I did not like,” and it was during a trip to Thailand shortly afterwards that she met a young man who she married and settled with in Australia.

In 2007, when she was living in Australia, Giuffre was contacted by the FBI as part of their investigations into Epstein’s sexual abuse of dozens of minors. She gave statements to the federal investigation, but it was finally blocked by the plea bargain deal struck between Epstein and Alex Acosta, then US attorney for Southern Florida.

Ghislaine Maxwell later denounced Giuffre as a liar, prompting Giuffre to launch a defamation suit against the British socialite in 2015. In her very detailed deposition, revealed in the US media and which included her accounts of sexual abuse by Epstein and his prominent acquaintances, Giuffre accused French model scout and agent Jean-Luc Brunel of supplying young girls for orgies. “I also had sexual intercourse with Jean-Luc Brunel many times when I was 16 through 19 years old,” she stated. “He was another of Epstein’s powerful friends who had many contacts with young girls throughout the world. In fact, his only similarity with Epstein and the only link to their friendship appeared to be that Brunel could get dozens of underage girls and feed Epstein’s (and Maxwell’s) strong appetite for sex with minors.”

Young models tell of spiked drinks and rape in Paris

“Brunel ran some kind of modeling agency and appeared to have an arrangement with the U.S. Government where he could get passports or other travel documents for young girls,” continued Giuffre in her deposition. “He would then bring these young girls (girls ranging in age from 12 to 24) to the United States for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends, including Epstein.”

“Brunel would offer the girls “modeling” jobs. A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money. I had to have sex with Brunel at Little St. James (orgies), Palm Beach, New York City, New Mexico, Paris, the south of France, and California.”

“Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls, and everything that I have seen confirms this claim,” Giuffre added.

In the end, the case she brought against Maxwell was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in 2017, shortly before it was due to go to trial.

Jean-Luc Brunel has strenuously denied the claims. Well known in the Paris modelling world, Brunel, now in his seventies, was described to Mediapart by a former business colleague as the “son of a well-to-do family”. He had a reputation for partying and a taste for luxurious cars, and during the 1980s and 1990s, before leaving for the US, he was a regular sight at trendy Parisian night clubs.  He claims to have helped launch the modelling careers of Jerry Hall, Sharon Stone and Christy Turlington.

Former model Zoë Brock told Mediapart that she was offered accommodation in Brunel’s large apartment on the avenue Hoche in central Paris when she arrived in the French capital in the early 1990s to work with his model agency. Speaking by phone from her native New Zealand, she said she was then aged 17 or 18 when Brunel, who she said was aged around 45, invited her to his bedroom when he announced they would at some point sleep together, and offered her cocaine. She said she subsequently kept her distance from him and as a result he sent her to a flat overcrowded with other girls in the Pigalle red-light district. She recounted that later, when she worked with other agencies, she discovered that she had been given a reputation as a drug user.

In October 2017, Brock, who became an actress, was among the first to accuse Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, which she said happened when the two were attending the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

Former Dutch model Thysia Huisman has told Mediapart that, also in the early 1990s, she was raped by Brunel. Speaking by telephone from the Netherlands, she said she had been sent to Paris by her modelling agency, and the events took place in Brunel’s Paris apartment after she was served a spiked drink. She said she found herself in Brunel’s bed, with Brunel on top of her. The next day, she recalled, she woke up feeling disorientated and, hearing Brunel in a phone conversation, collected her belongings and left without a word spoken.

She said that during her stay in Paris she had witnessed evening parties at Brunel’s apartment where “very young” girls, from east and central Europe, appeared in the company of older men. One of these, she said, resembled Epstein.  

Huisman, an only child who lost her mother at the age of five and who lived apart from her father, said she was unable to speak of the alleged events with Brunel for several years, and was left feeling shame and guilt. She would never return to work in Paris, and changed her career to work on the other side of the camera as a film director.

 Huisman’s and Brock's accounts resembled others given by American models to an episode of CBS current affairs programme 60 Minutes broadcast in 1988. The programme is not available online, but Mediapart has gained access to extracts of the interviews. One of those interviewed, whose identity was concealed, said she had been invited to Brunel’s Paris home in the company of some of his friends. She said a powerful hallucinogenic drug was slipped into her drink, and that Brunel encouraged her to take a bath. “I started hallucinating and at first I was very confused, it was very scary,” she told the reporter, Diane Sawyer, “because if you don’t know that you’ve been drugged and you start hallucinating that’s very scary.” She said she managed to leave the house but remained disorientated for 24 hours.   

Another woman, a former US model whose identity was also concealed, described how she had gone to Brunel’s home several years earlier, when she was given a drink and then blacked out. “I don’t remember anything after that,” she said. The next thing she said she did remember was “being in this man’s bed”. Pressed, she said “It was Jean-Luc”. Asked if she was raped, she replied: “I do know that. I am positive. I know.” She said a “lot of people” knew about Brunel’s behaviour. “Everyone continues to deal with him, I don’t know why.”

Sawyer interviewed a third model who appeared with no disguise, and asked what happens if a model says no to Brunel’s advances. “I paid the penalty for saying ‘no’”, the model replied. “I was proposed to himself, Jean-Luc, and I said ‘no way’, I laughed – and I had no more appointments, and I never worked.”

At the time, Brunel refused to be interviewed by CBS, but insisted that he denied the allegations made by the models.

Brunel eventually moved his activities to the US, where he was helped financially by Epstein. Mediapart has obtained access to a 70-page statement given in 2010 by Maritza Vasquez, a former accountant of Brunel’s MC2 model agency, who detailed the alliance between Brunel and Epstein. She said she had worked for Brunel between 1998 and 2006, and had met Epstein on one occasion, for the opening of MC2 in New York. “Jean-Luc always said that Jeffrey was his friend, that he is a millionaire,” Vasquez said. “And that Jeffrey was giving him the money to – you know, loans or whatever – and the apartments for the girls and things like that.” The accountant said she had seen the rents that Brunel demanded the “girls” paid for their accommodation in the Manhattan building owned by Epstein, at 301 East 66th Street. Brunel also lodged in the same building but, she said, paid no rent to Epstein.

Vasquez also spoke of a “line of credit” of 1 million dollars that Epstein had signed for the benefit of the agency, which has offices in New York, Miami and Tel Aviv. Asked what she thought Epstein was getting in return for his help, she answered: “The only thing that I can think he was getting was the girls. Nothing else. Because he has all the money.”

Vasquez said the agency was always in debt, and Brunel relied on cash injections from Epstein, with whom she said Brunel joined on some trips in the financier’s private jet.  

At the end of 2014, Brunel returned to France after being unable to renew his visa. The following year he sued Epstein for damages, arguing that his business had suffered losses of “millions of dollars” because of being associated with his former friend and benefactor’s behaviour and bad reputation. In his lawsuit, filed in Florida, Brunel claimed he had lost numerous contracts, notably with the top model agency Elite Model Management. 

In a statement issued on his behalf, also in 2015, by a French public relations agency, Brunel said: “I strongly deny having participated, neither directly nor indirectly, in the actions Mr Jeffrey Epstein is being accused of,” adding: “I strongly deny having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing in the course of my work as a scouter or model agencies manager.”

It is unclear what Brunel’s activities have involved since then, although it appears he is still active with Paris model agencies.

A source once close to his former agency told Mediapart that they had seen him in Paris in November 2017, and described the photo above as having been taken on that occasion.

Brunel did not respond to Mediapart’s attempts to interview him via questions sent by email and also submitted to his lawyer, who said that although he had passed them on to his client he had received no reply.

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• The French version of this report can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse